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A 

CHRISTMAS 

CAROL 


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Facsimile of title on first page of original MS. 































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FOGGIER YET, AND COLDER ! 

“GOD BLESS YOU, MERRY GENTLEMAN 
MAY NOTHING YOU DISMAY ! ” 




Page 14 





















A 

CHRISTMAS 

CAROL 

% CHARLES DICKENS 


NOW ILLUSTRATED IN 
COLOURS FROM SPECIAL 
DRAWINGS BY 

ETHEL F. EVERETT 





NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 













Ce * 
- 


Copyright 1924 

By Thomas Y. Crowell Company 


Printed in the United States of America 

MAR 28’24 

© Cl ft 7 77 8 3 0 

'Vi ' | 



C7" , HE greatest little book in the world!” 
exclaims a recent writer* concerning Dick¬ 
ens’s “A Christmas Carol”; and though 
some readers may qualify the verdict, they would 
doubtless agree that in any event it is “the 
greatest little Christmas book in the world.” 

Indeed, thanks to this more than any other 
of the great novelist’s writings, Dickens has 
almost become a synonym for Christmas. He 
was its first great apostle to the English people; 
and because of this message countless thousands 
of poor backs have been clothed and hungry 
stomachs fed. His was a message of love without 
condescension, of brotherliness which knew no 
dividing line between rich and poor. Or perhaps 
he recognized the spirit of Christmas as the 
bridge across the chasm. 

Dickens first hit upon the idea of the “Carol” 
while on a visit to Manchester, early in October, 
1843. He had gone there to preside at the open¬ 
ing of the Athaneum, another distinguished guest 
being Benjamin Disraeli. While walking through 
the streets of that city it burst upon him like a 

•Mr. A. Edward Newton, in The Atlantic Monthly. 

[V] 









iHZ'RO © uc^io^c 

vision, and so wrought up over the plot was he that 
he hurried back to London to write out the story. 

He temporarily turned aside from “that study 
of selfishness ,, upon which he was then engaged, 
“Martin Chuzzlewit,” to write the “little Carol,” 
as he affectionately called it, in praise of unself¬ 
ishness. It was a labour of love, and as was 
his wont in gathering material for his stories, he 
forsook his warm study to prowl about the streets 
of London early and late. He haunted the homes 
of the poor. He experienced the biting chill of 
the wintry fog. Has anyone described better 
than he the all-pervading chill of such a day? 

“It was cold, bleak, biting weather; foggy 
withal; and he could hear the people in the court 
outside go wheezing up and down, beating their 
hands upon their breasts, and stamping their 
feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. 
The fog came pouring in at every chink and key¬ 
hole and was so dense without that, although 
the court was of the narrowest, the houses op¬ 
posite were mere phantoms.” And again: “The 
ancient tower of a church whose gruff old bell... 
became invisible, struck the hours and quarters 
in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations after¬ 
wards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen 
head up there.” 


[VI] 



7JA(T2?0 T> UCTIO^C 

Upon this bleak scene the story is launched— 
but we defy even the most hardened reader, who 
may have read the “Carol” a score of times al¬ 
ready, to keep from following the magic of its 
pages again—clear to the final treble of Tiny 
Tim’s voice, with its “God bless us, every one!” 

Dickens himself always viewed this story with 
peculiar affection. Upon sending one of the first 
copies to a friend, Professor Felton, in Boston he 
wrote: “Over which ‘Christmas Carol’ Charles 
Dickens wept and laughed and wept again, and 
excited himself in a most extraordinary manner 
in the composition; and thinking whereof he 
walked about the black streets of London, fifteen 
and twenty miles many a night when all the 
sober folks had gone to bed. . . . To keep the 
‘Chuzzlewit’ going, and do this little book, the 
‘Carol,’ in the odd times was, as you may suppose, 
pretty tight work. But when it was done I 
broke out like a madman. And if you could have 
seen me at a children’s party at Macready’s the 
other night, going down a country dance with 
Mrs. M., you would have thought I was a 
country gentleman of independent property, 
residing on a tip-top farm, with the wind blowing 
straight in my face every day.” 

[VII] 


i^r^oDucTio^c 

“In a word,” says B. W. Matz, “Dickens was 
as happy at having written the ‘Carol’ as he has 
made hundreds of thousands who have read it 
since; and that same power and influence the 
little story had over the man who wrote it, has 
been exercised over multitudes of grateful readers 
during the years that have intervened. The 
little book burst upon the world, appealed to all, 
rich and poor, and was immediately hailed as a 
masterpiece; and a masterpiece it will remain.” 

John Forster, the biographer of Dickens, 
adds: “Never had little book an outset so full of 
brilliancy of promise. Published but a few days 
before Christmas (1843), it was hailed on every 
side with enthusiastic greeting. The first edition 
of six thousand copies was sold the first day, and 
on the third of January, 1844, he wrote me that 
‘two thousand of the three printed for second 
and third editions are already taken by the 
trade.’ Fifteen thousand copies were disposed 
of in the next few weeks before there was any 
falling off in the first demand. Dickens was 
immensely pleased and exclaimed: “The ‘Carol’ 
is the greatest success, I am told, that this ruffian 
and rascal has ever achieved.” 

In those days of far more restricted book sales 
than the present, such a quick distribution was 
[ viii ] 


/JA<T2^0 © UCTIOJ^ 

phenomenal. Who can estimate, in the eighty 
years that have intervened, the total number of 
“Carols” which have sung their way into the 
heart of mankind? Into every civilized country 
it has penetrated, and has been translated into 
almost every tongue. 

“Blessings on your kind heart!” wrote Jeffrey 
to Dickens. “You should be happy yourself, for 
you may be sure you have done more good by 
this little publication, fostered more kindly 
feelings, and prompted more positive acts of 
beneficence, than can be traced to all the pulpits 
and confessionals in Christendom, since Christ¬ 
mas, 1842.” 

“Who can listen,” exclaimed Thackeray, “to 
objections regarding such a book as this? It 
seems to me a national benefit, and to every 
man or woman who reads it a personal kindness.” 

The little book was, however, by no means 
dependent upon the praise of eminent critics 
and authors for its success. The common people 
took it at once to their hearts; it was peculiarly 
their own. “There poured upon its author 
daily,” says Forster, “all through that Christ¬ 
mas time, letters from complete strangers to 
him, which I remember reading with a wonder 
of pleasure; not literary at all, but of the simplest 


T> UCTIOt 

domestic kind; of which the general burden was 
to tell him, amid many confidences about their 
homes, how the ‘Carol' had come to be read 
aloud there, and was to be kept on a little shelf 
by itself, and was to do them no end of good. 
Anything more to be said of it will not add much 
to this.” 

Soon after its publication, requests began to 
come in, that Dickens add it to his list of public 
readings. These readings, be it remembered, 
were something more than the term implies. 
Dickens usually memorized his public selections 
and injected into them much histrionic art. 
One of his unrealized ambitions was to be an 
actor; and he frequently took part, very credit¬ 
ably, in amateur theatricals. These public read¬ 
ings furnished a further outlet for this talent. 
In the course of the next few years, he made it a 
practice to read the “Carol” around Christmas 
time, and always with telling effect. Frequently 
he read for charitable institutions. There is a 
record of one such reading for the Child's Hos¬ 
pital of Edinburgh which netted that institution 
over three thousand pounds. One of his mem¬ 
oranda to Forster says: “The first readings were 
to comprise only the ‘Carol,' and for others a new 
story is to be written. I propose to announce 
[X] 



T> UC^IO^C 

in a short and plain advertisement (what is quite 
true) that I cannot so much as answer the num¬ 
erous applications that are made to me to read, 
and that compliance with ever so few of them is, 
in any reason, impossible.” 

In 1868, on Dickens’s second visit to America, 
he brought his beloved “Carol” along, and again 
it proved one of the high spots in his repertory. 
He wrote on April 28: “To-morrow fortnight 
we purpose being at the Falls of Niagara, and 
then we shall come back and really begin to 
wind up. I have got to know the ‘Carol’ so well 
that I can’t remember it, and occasionally go 
dodging about in the wildest manner, to pick 
up lost pieces. They took it so tremendously 
last night that I was stopped every five minutes. 
One poor young girl in mourning burst into a pas¬ 
sion of grief about Tiny Tim, and was taken out.” 

But even without the vibrant voice of Dickens, 
the message of the “Carol” goes straight to the 
waiting heart. It would be a case-hardened 
individual indeed who could read this simple, 
tender story without a trembling of the lips and 
a moisture of the eye. It has become part and 
parcel of the spirit of Christmas. 

Mr. Newton, the Dickens enthusiast earlier 
quoted, confesses: “I usually buy two copies 
[XI] 


i^cr^ovucrio^c 

at one time; one to read, the other to lend, when 
the time comes to read it—and it comes once a 
year.” 

In the same vein, Henry van Dyke refers to 
the “Carol” in a review of holiday books for 
Christmas, 1923,* as “this inimitable tale—good 
enough to read over more than once.” 

In 1923, just eighty years after the first ap¬ 
pearance of the book, a publishers’ committee 
in London brought out a facsimile edition. In its 
preparation every effort was made to present an 
exact replica of the original. As far as possible, 
the paper, type, illustrations and binding are 
identical. The illustrations consist of four en¬ 
graved plates and four wood-cuts by John Leech. 
Even the end papers were as carefully matched 
as possible. 

Regarding the original edition, Mr. Matz 
says: “Immediately after the publication of the 
‘Carol’ Dickens presented the manuscript to 
his old school-fellow and solicitor, Mr. Thomas 
Milton. In 1875 it was sold to a London book¬ 
seller for fifty pounds, and then passed on to 
Mr. G. Churchill. In 1882 it was acquired by a 
Birmingham bookseller, who in turn sold it to 
Mr. (afterwards Sir) Stuart M. Samuel, who 


*New York Times. 


[XII] 



I^CTl^O^UC'TIO^C 

ultimately disposed of it to Mr. J. P. Morgan, of 
New York, in which city it now reposes. It 
would be venturesome to suggest how many 
thousand pounds it would fetch if sold at auction 
to-day.” 

Forster, writing in the days of its first pub¬ 
lication, has these prophetic words: “There 
is indeed nobody that has not some interest in 
the message of the ‘Christmas Carol.’ It told 
the selfish man to rid himself of selfishness; the 
just man to make himself generous; and the 
good-natured man to enlarge the sphere of his 
good nature. Its cheery voice of faith and hope 
carried pleasant warning alike to all, that if the 
duties of Christmas were wanting, no good could 
come of its outward observances: that it must 
shine upon the cold hearth and warm it, and 
into the sorrowful heart and comfort it; that it 
must be kindness, benevolence, charity, mercy, 
and forbearance, or its plum pudding would 
turn to bile, and its roast beef be indigestible. 
Nor could any man have said it with the same 
appropriateness as Dickens. What was marked 
in him to the last was manifest now. He had 
identified himself with Christmas fancies.” 

The “Carol” is just as much a part of our 
Christmas to-day as it was when the ink was not 
[XIII] 


i^cr^ovucTio^c 

dry on its pages. The reason is not far to seek: 
It is the intense humanity of the message which 
keeps it from growing old. It appeals alike to the 
graybeard chuckling over past holidays, and to 
the youngster who anticipates the new. It is 
a sermon against selfishness—yes—but it is 
also a series of sharp vignettes of Christmas joys. 
Who can resist the frank appeal of that dinner 
of the Cratchits? 

“There never was such a goose. Bob said he 
didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. 
Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were 
the themes of universal admiration. . . . Hallo! 
A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of 
the copper. ... In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit 
entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the 
pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and 
firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited 
brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck 
into the top.” 

Such delights as these speak a universal 
language. But behind them is the deeper note 
which even children can understand—the note 
of neighborliness, of the brotherhood of man. 

— J, Walker McSpadden . 


[XIV] 



co^cje^cjs 



STAVE ONE . 1 

MARLEY’S GHOST 

STAVE TWO . 35 

THE FIRST OF THE THREE 
SPIRITS 

STAVE THREE . 65 

THE SECOND OF THE THREE 
SPIRITS 

STAVE FOUR . 105 

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

STAVE FIVE . 133 

THE END OF IT 


[XV] 















H I^UST^ATIOHS H 

Drawn in Colour by Ethel F. Everett 

Foggier yet and colder!.Frontispiece 

“God bless you, merry gentleman, 

May nothing you dismay!” 

PAGE 

Old Scrooge sat busy in his Counting-House. 4 

Not a knocker, but Marley’s face. 17 

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley”. 23 

Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his 

poor forgotten self as he had used to be. 44 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair 

young girl .... in whose eyes there were tears_ 57 

Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling 
proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled 
cannon-ball. 82 

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God 

bless us!”. 83 

Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was 

from God. 127 

Scrooge crept towards it, and read upon the stone 

his own name, “Ebenezer Scrooge”. 130 

Walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge re¬ 
garded every one with a delighted smile. 138 

Scrooge was better than his word .... to Tiny 

Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. 143 

[XVI] 





















sTzAve o^ce 



MARLEY'S GHOST 

^It^ARLEY was dead, to begin with. There 
is no doubt whatever about that. The 
register of his burial was signed by the clergy¬ 
man, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief 
mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's 
name was good upon 'Change for anything he 
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as 
dead as a door-nail. 

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of 
my own knowledge, what there is particularly 
dead about a door-nail. I might have been 
inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the 
deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But 
the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; 
and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, 
or the country's done for. You will, therefore, 
permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley 
was as dead as a door-nail. 

Scrooge knew he? was dead? Of course he 
did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and 
he were partners for I don't know how many 
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole ad¬ 
ministrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary 








*A CH%I STzMtA S C^XPL 

legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And 
even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by 
the sad event, but that he was an excellent man 
of business on the very day of the funeral, and 
solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. 

The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me 
back to the point I started from. There is no 
doubt that Marley was dead. This must be 
distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can 
come of the story I am going to relate. If we 
were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s 
Father died before the play began, there would 
be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll 
at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ram¬ 
parts, than there would be in any other middle- 
aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a. 
breezy spot—say St. Paul’s Churchyard, for 
instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak 
mind. 

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. 
There it stood, years afterwards, above the ware¬ 
house door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was 
known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes 
people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, 
and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both 
names. It was all the same to him. 

[ 2 ] 


CH^STzM^S C^%OL 

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the 
grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, 
grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sin¬ 
ner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no 
steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, 
and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. 
The cold within him froze his old features, 
nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, 
stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips 
blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. 
A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eye¬ 
brows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own 
low temperature always about with him; he iced 
his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one 
degree at Christmas. 

External heat and cold had little influence on 
Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry 
weather chill him. No wind that blew was 
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent 
upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to 
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to 
have him. The heaviest rain and snow, and 
hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over 
him in only one respect. They often “came 
down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did. 

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, 
with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how 


zA CHTtJ STzMzA S C^KP L 

are you? When will you come to see me?” 
No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, 
no children asked him what it was o’clock, no 
man or woman ever once in all his life inquired 
the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. 
Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know 
him; and, when they saw him coming on, would 
tug their owners into doorways and up courts; 
and then would wag their tails as though they 
said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, 
dark master!” 

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very 
thing he liked. To edge his way along the 
crowded paths of life, warning all human sympa¬ 
thy to keep its distance, was what the knowing 
ones call “nuts” to Scrooge. 

Once upon a time—of all the good days in 
the year, on Christmas Eve—old Scrooge sat 
busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, 
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could 
hear the people in the court outside go wheezing 
up and down, beating their hands upon their 
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pave¬ 
ment stones to warm them. The City clocks 
had only just gone three, but it was quite dark 
already—it had not been light all day—and 
candles were flaring in the windows of the neigh- 



OLD SCROOGE SAT BUSY 
IN HIS COUNTING-HOUSE 

Page 4 













*a CH^sr^r^s c^XPL 

bouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the 
palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in 
at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense 
without, that, although the court was of the 
narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phan¬ 
toms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping 
down, obscuring everything, one might have 
thought that nature lived hard by, and was 
brewing on a large scale. 

The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was 
open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, 
,who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, 
was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small 
fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller 
that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t 
replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his 
own room; and so surely as the clerk came in 
with the shovel, the master predicted that it 
would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore 
the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to 
warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not 
being a man of strong imagination, he failed. 

“A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!” 
cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of 
Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly 
that this was the first intimation he had of his 
approach. 


[ 5 ] 





CH'RJSTtMtA S C^XPL 

“Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!” 

He had so heated himself with rapid walking 
in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, 
that he was all in a glow: his face was ruddy and 
handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath 
smoked again. 

“Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge’s 
newphew. “You don’t mean that, I am sure?’’ 

“I do,’’ said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas! 
What right have you to be merry? What reason 
have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.’’ 

“Come, then,’’ returned the nephew gaily. 
“What right have you to be dismal? What 
reason have you to be morose? You’re rich 
enough.’’ 

Scrooge, having no better answer ready on 
the spur of the moment, said, “Bah!’’ again; and 
followed it up with “Humbug!’’ 

“Don’t be cross, uncle!’’ said the nephew. 

“What else can I be,’’ returned the uncle, 
“when I live in such a world of fools as this? 
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! 
What’s Christmas-time to you but a time for 
paying bills without money; a time for finding 
yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a 
time for balancing your books, and having every 
item in ’em through a round dozen of months 
[ 6 ] 


*A £H %I STzMtA S C^XOL 

presented dead against you? If I could work 
my will,” said Scrooge indignantly, “every idiot 
who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on 
his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, 
and buried with a stake of holly through his 
heart. He should!” 

“Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. 

“Nephew!” returned the uncle sternly, “keep 
Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it 
in mine.” 

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But 
you don’t keep it.” 

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. 
“Much good may it do you! Much good it has 
ever done you!” 

“There are many things from which I might 
have derived good, by which I have not profited, 
I dare say,” returned the nephew; “Christmas 
among the rest. But I am sure I have always 
thought of Christmas-time, when it has come 
round—apart from the veneration due to its 
sacred name and origin, if anything belonging 
to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a 
kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the 
only time I know of, in the long calendar of the 
year, when men and women seem by one consent 
to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think 
[ 7 ] 






*A CH'XJSTzMtA S C^KP L 

of people below them as if they really were fellow- 
passengers to the grave, and not another race 
of creatures bound on other journeys. And 
therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap 
of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it 
has done me good, and will do me good; and I 
say, God bless it!” 

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. 
Becoming immediately sensible of the impro¬ 
priety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the 
last frail spark for ever. 

“Let me hear another sound from you” said 
Scrooge, “and you'll keep your Christmas by 
losing your situation! You're quite a powerful 
speaker, sir,” he added, turning to his nephew. 
“I wonder you don't go into Parliament.” 

“Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with 
us to-morrow.” 

Scrooge said that he would see him-Yes, 

indeed he did. He went the whole length of the 
expression, and said that he would see him in 
that extremity first. 

“But why ?” cried Scrooge's nephew. “Why ?” 

“Why did you get married?” said Scrooge. 

“Because I fell in love.” 

“Because you fell in love!” growled Scrooge, 
as if that were the only one thing in the world 
[ 8 ] 


*A CH^STJtftA S C^XOL 

more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. “Good 
afternoon!" 

“Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me 
before that happened. Why give it as a reason 
for not coming now?” 

“Good afternoon," said Scrooge. 

“I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of 
you; why cannot we be friends?” 

“Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. 

“I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so 
resolute. We have never had any quarrel to 
which I have been a party. But I have made the 
trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my 
Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry 
Christmas, uncle!" 

“Good afternoon/' said Scrooge. 

“And A Happy New Year!" 

“Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. 

His nephew left the room without an angry 
word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer 
door to bestow the greetings of the season on 
the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer 
than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially. 

“There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, 
who overheard him: “my clerk, with fifteen 
shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking 
about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam." 
[ 9 ] 





iA CH%I STtMzA S C^X9 L 

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew 
out, had let two other people in. They were 
portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now 
stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. 
They had books and papers in their hands, and 
bowed to him. 

“Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one 
of the gentlemen referring to his list. “Have 
I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or 
Mr. Marley?” 

“Mr. Marley has been dead these seven 
years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years 
ago, this very night.” 

“We have no doubt his liberality is well rep¬ 
resented by his surviving partner,” said the 
gentleman, presenting his credentials. 

It certainly was; for they had been two 
kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liber¬ 
ality” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and 
handed the credentials back. 

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. 
Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 
“it is more than usually desirable that we should 
make some slight provision for the poor and 
destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. 
Many thousands are in want of common neces- 
110 ] 


*A CH %I S TzMzA S 

saries; hundreds of thousands are in want of 
common comforts, sir.” 

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge. 

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying 
down the pen again. 

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded 
Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?” 

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, 
“I wish I could say they were not.” 

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full 
vigour, then?” said Scrooge. 

“Both very busy, sir.” 

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, 
that something had occurred to stop them in 
their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I am very 
glad to hear it.” 

“Under the impression that they scarcely 
furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the 
multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of 
us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the 
Poor some meat and drink, and means of 
warmth. We choose this time, because it is a 
time of all others, when Want is keenly felt, 
and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you 
down for?” 

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied. 

“You wish to be anonymous ?” 

[ 11 ] 




CH %IS T*MzA S C^XPL 

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since 
you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my 
answer. I don’t make merry myself, at Christ¬ 
mas, and I can’t afford to make idle people 
merry. I help to support the establishments I 
have mentioned—they cost enough: and those 
who are badly off must go there.” 

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather 
die.” 

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, 
“they had better do it, and decrease the surplus 
population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know 
that.” 

“But you might know it.” observed the 
gentleman. 

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. 
“It’s enough for a man to understand his own 
business, and not to interfere with other people’s. 
Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, 
gentlemen!” 

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pur¬ 
sue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge 
resumed his labours with an improved opinion 
of himself, and in a more facetious temper than 
was usual with him. 

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened 
so, that people ran about with flaring links, 
[ 12 ] 


cH S S C^XPL 

proffering their services to go before horses in 
carriages, and conduct them on their way. The 
ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell 
was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out 
of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, 
and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, 
with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its 
teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. 
The cold became intense. In the main street, 
at the corner of the court, some labourers were 
repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great 
fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged 
men and boys were gathered: warming their 
hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in 
rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, 
its overflowings suddenly congealed, and turned 
to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops, 
where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the 
lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy 
as they passed. Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades 
became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with 
which it was next to impossible to believe that 
such dull principles as bargain and sale had any¬ 
thing to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold 
of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his 
fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a 
Lord Mayor’s household should; and even the 
[ 13 ] 



*A CHTUSTtMtA S C^KP L 

little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on 
the previous Monday for being drunk and blood¬ 
thirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s 
pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and 
the baby sallied out to buy the beef. 

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, 
biting cold. If the good St. Dunstan had but 
nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of 
such weather as that, instead of using his familiar 
weapons, then indeed he would have roared’ to 
lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young 
nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold 
as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at 
Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas 
carol; but at the first sound of 

“God bless you , merry gentleman , 

May nothing you dismay /” 

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of 
action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving 
the keyhole to the fog, and even more congenial 
frost. 

At length the hour of shutting up the counting- 
house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dis¬ 
mounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the 
fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who 
[ 14 ] 


*A CH%I STtMzAS C^XPL 

instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on 
his hat. 

“You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” 
said Scrooge. 

“If quite convenient, sir.” 

“It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and 
it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for 
it, you’d think yourself ill used, I’ll be bound?” 

The clerk smiled faintly. 

“And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me 
ill used when I pay a day’s wages for no work.” 

The clerk observed that it was only once a year. 

“A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket 
every twenty-fifth of December!” said Scrooge, 
buttoning his great-coat to the chin. “But I 
suppose you must have the whole day. Be 
here all the earlier next morning.” 

The clerk promised that he would; and 
Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was 
closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the 
long ends of his white comforter dangling below 
his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went 
down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of 
boys, twenty times, in honour of its being 
Christmas-eve, and then ran home to Camden 
Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blind 
man’s buff. 


[ 15 ] 




*A CH%I STtMA S C^XOL 

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his 
usual melancholy tavern; and having read all 
the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the 
evening with his banker's book, went home to 
bed. He lived in chambers which had once 
belonged to his deceased partner. They were 
a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of 
building up a yard, where it had so little busi¬ 
ness to be, that one could scarcely help fancying 
it must have run there when it was a young 
house, playing at hide-and-seek with other 
houses, and have forgotten the way out again. 
It was old enough now, and dreary enough; 
for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other 
rooms being all let out as offices. The yard 
was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its 
every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. 
The fog and frost so hung about the black old 
gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the 
Genius of the Weather sat in mournful medita¬ 
tion on the threshold. 

Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at 
all particular about the knocker on the door, 
except that it was very large. It is also a fact 
that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, 
during his whole residence in that place; also 
that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy 
[ 16 ] 



NOT A KNOCKER, BUT 
MARLEY’S FACE 

Page 17 


















*A CH %I S TzMzA S C^%S> L 

about him as any man in the City of London, 
even including—which is a bold word—the 
corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be 
borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed 
one thought on Marley since his last mention 
of his seven-years’-dead partner that afternoon. 
And then let any man explain to me, if he can, 
how it happened that Scrooge, having his key 
in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, 
without its undergoing any intermediate process 
of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face. 

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable 
shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, 
but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster 
in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, 
but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: 
with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly 
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if 
by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were 
wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, 
and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its 
horror seemed to be in spite of the face, and 
beyond its control, rather than a part of its own 
expression. 

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, 
it was a knocker again. 

[ 17 ] 



ot CH'XJ STzMzA S C^%S> L 

To say that he was not startled, or that his 
blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation 
to which it had been a stranger from infancy, 
would be untrue. But he put his hand upon 
the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, 
walked in, and lighted his candle. 

He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, 
before he shut the door; and he did look cau¬ 
tiously behind it first, as if he half expected to 
be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail 
sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing 
on the back of the door except the screws and 
nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, “Pooh, 
pooh!" and closed it with a bang. 

The sound resounded through the house like 
thunder. Every room above, and every cask 
in the wine merchant's cellars below, appeared 
to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. 
Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by 
echoes. He fastened the door, and walked 
across the hall, and up the stairs: slowly, too: 
trimming his candle as he went. 

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach 
and six up a good old flight of stairs, or through 
a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to 
say you might have got a hearse up that stair¬ 
case, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter- 


*A CH'RJSTzMtAS C^KPL 

bar towards the wall, and the door towards the 
balustrades: and done it easy. There was 
plenty of width for that, and room to spare; 
which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought 
he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him 
in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of 
the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too 
well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark 
with Scrooge's dip. 

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for 
that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. 
But, before he shut his heavy door, he walked 
through his rooms to see that all was right. He 
had just enough recollection of the face to desire 
to do that. 

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as 
they should be. Nobody under the table, no¬ 
body under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; 
spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan 
of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon 
the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in 
the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which 
was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against 
the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire¬ 
guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, washing- 
stand on three legs, and a poker. 





*A CH%ISTzMzA S C^X9L 

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked 
himself in; double locked himself in, which was 
not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, 
he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown 
and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down 
before the fire to take his gruel. 

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such 
a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, 
and brood over it, before he could extract the 
least sensation of warmth from such a handful of 
fuel. The fire-place was an old one, built by some 
Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round 
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate 
the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, 
Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic 
messengers descending through the air on clouds 
like feather beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apos¬ 
tles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds 
of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that 
face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the 
ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the 
whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at 
first, with power to shape some picture on its 
surface from the disjointed fragments of his 
thoughts, there would have been a copy of old 
Marley’s head on every one. 

[ 20 ] 


CH^ISTzMzA S C^%OL 

“Humbug!” said Scrooge, and walked across 
the room. 

After several turns he sat down again. As 
he threw his head back in the chair, his glance 
happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, 
that hung in the room, and communicated, for 
some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber 
in the highest story of the building. It was 
with great astonishment, and with a strange, 
inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw 
this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly 
in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; 
but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every 
bell in the house. 

This might have lasted half a minute, or a 
minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells 
ceased, as they had begun, together. They-were 
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, 
as if some person were dragging a heavy chain 
over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. 
Scrooge then remembered to have heard that 
ghosts in haunted houses were described as 
dragging chains. 

The cellar door flew open with a booming 
sound, and then he heard the noise much louder 
on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; 
then coming straight towards his door. 

[ 21 ] 





CH%ISTtMtA S 

“It’s humbug still!” said Scrooge. “I won’t 
believe it.” 

His colour changed, though, when, without 
a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and 
passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its 
coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though 
it cried, “I know him! Marley’s Ghost!” and 
fell again. 

The same face: the very same. Marley in his 
pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the 
tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and 
his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The 
chain he drew was clasped about his middle. 
It was long, and wound about him like a tail; 
and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) 
of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, 
and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body 
was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing 
him, and looking through his waistcoat, could 
see the two buttons on his coat behind. 

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley 
had no bowels, but he had never believed it 
until now. 

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though 
he looked the phantom through and through, 
and saw it standing before him; though he felt 
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and 
[ 22 ] 









“IN LIFE I WAS YOUR PARTNER, 
JACOB MARLEY” 


Page 23 




















*A CH%ISTzM^S C^XPL 

marked the very texture of the folded kerchief 
bound about its head and chin, which wrapper 
he had not observed before; he was still incred¬ 
ulous, and fought against his senses. 

“How now!” said Scrooge, caustic and cold 
as ever. “What do you want with me?” 

“Much!”—Marley’s voice, no doubt about it. 

“Who are you?” 

“Ask me who I was” 

“Who were you, then?” said Scrooge, raising 
his voice. “You’re particular, for a shade.” He 
was going to say, “to a shade,” but substituted 
this, as more appropriate. 

“In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.” 

“Can you—can you sit down?” asked Scrooge, 
looking doubtfully at him. 

“I can.” 

“Do it, then.” 

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t 
know whether a ghost so transparent might 
find himself in a condition to take a chair; and 
felt that, in the event of its being impossible, it 
might involve the necessity of an embarrassing 
explanation. But the Ghost sat down on the 
opposite side of the fire-place, as if he were 
quite used to it. 


[ 23 ] 







*a ch^isTzMzAS c^X9 l 

“You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost. 

“I don’t,” said Scrooge. 

“What evidence would you have of my reality 
beyond that of your own senses?” 

“I don’t know,” said Scrooge. 

“Why do you doubt your senses?” 

“Because,” said Scrooge, “a little thing affects 
them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes 
them cheats. You may be an undigested bit 
of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a 
fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more 
of gravy than of grave about you, whatever 
you are!” 

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking 
jokes, nor did he feel in"his heart by any means 
waggish then. The truth is that he tried to be 
smart, as a means of distracting his own atten¬ 
tion, and keeping down his terror; for the 
spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in 
his bones. 

To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in 
silence, for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, 
the very deuce with him. There was something 
very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided 
with an infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge 
could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the 
[ 24 ] 


zA CH'KJSTzMA s c^%o L 

case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motion¬ 
less, its hair, and skirts, and tassels were still 
agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. 

“You see this toothpick ?” said Scrooge, re¬ 
turning quickly to the charge, for the reason just 
assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a 
second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from 
himself. 

“I do,” replied the Ghost. 

“You are not looking at it,” said Scrooge. 

“But I see it,” said the Ghost, “notwith¬ 
standing.” 

“Well!” returned Scrooge, “I have but to 
swallow this, and be for the rest of my days 
persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own 
creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug!” 

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and 
shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling 
noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to 
save himself from falling in a swoon. But how 
much greater was his horror when the phantom, 
taking off the bandage round his head, as if it 
were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw 
dropped down upon its breast! 

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his 
hands before his face. 


[ 25 ] 




of CH'RJ STtMzA S C^KPL 

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why 
do you trouble me?” 

“Man of the wordly mind!” replied the Ghost, 
“do you believe in me or not?” 

“I do,” said Scrooge. “I must. But why do 
spirits walk the earth, and why do they come 
to me?” 

“It is required of every man,” the Ghost 
returned, “that the spirit within him should 
walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel 
far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth 
in life, it is condemned to do so after death. 
It is doomed to wander through the world— 
oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot 
but might have shared on earth, and turned 
to happiness!” 

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its 
chain and wrung its shadowy hands. 

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. 
“Tell me why?” 

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied 
the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard 
by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and 
of my own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern 
strange to you?” 

Scrooge trembled more and more. 


*A CH'HJSTzMzA S C^XPL 

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, 
“the weight and length of the strong coil you 
bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long 
as this, seven Christmas-eves ago. You have 
laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!” 

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in 
the expectation of finding himself surrounded 
by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable; 
but he could see nothing. 

“Jacob!” he said imploringly. “Old Jacob 
Marley, tell me more! Speak comfort to me, 
Jacob!” 

“I have none to give,” the Ghost replied. 
“It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, 
and is conveyed by other ministers, to other 
kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. 
A very little more is all permitted to me. I can¬ 
not rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. 
My spirit never walked beyond our counting- 
house—mark me;—in life my spirit never roved 
beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing 
hole; and weary journeys lie before me!” 

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he 
became thoughtful, to put his hands in his 
breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost 
had said, he did so now, but without lifting up 
his eyes, or getting off his knees. 

[ 27 ] 





*a ch^isTzM^as c^X9 l 

“You must have been very slow about it, 
Jacob,” Scrooge observed in a business-like 
manner, thought with humility and deference. 

“Slow!” the Ghost repeated. 

“Seven years dead,” mused Scrooge. “And 
travelling all the time?” 

“The whole time,” said the Ghost. “No rest, 
no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.” 

“You travel fast?” said Scrooge. 

“On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. 

“You might have got over a great quantity 
of ground in seven years,” said Scrooge. 

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another 
cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the 
dead silence of the night, that the Ward would 
have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance. 

“Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” 
cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of 
incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for 
this earth must pass into eternity before the 
good of which it is susceptible is all developed! 
Not to know that any Christian spirit working 
kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will 
find its mortal life too short for its vast means 
of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret 
can make amends for one life's opportunities 
misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I.” 

[ 28 ] 


A CH%I STtMA S C^XOL 

“But you were always a good man of business, 
Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to 
apply this to himself. 

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its 
hands again. “Mankind was my business. The 
common welfare was my business; charity, 
mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, 
my business. The dealings of my trade were 
but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean 
of my business!” 

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that 
were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and 
flung it heavily upon the ground again. 

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre 
said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through 
crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned 
down, and never raise them to that blessed Star 
which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were 
there no poor homes to which its light would 
have conducted me?” 

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the 
spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake 
exceedingly. 

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is 
nearly gone.” 

“I will, said Scrooge. “But don’t be hard 
upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!” 

[ 29 ] 





*A CH%I S C^XPL 

‘‘How it is that I appear before you in a 
shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have 
sat invisible beside you many and many a day.” 

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, 
and wiped the perspiration from his brow. 

“That is no light part of my penance,” pur¬ 
sued the Ghost. “I am here to-night to warn 
you that you have yet a chance and hope of 
escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my 
procuring, Ebenezer.” 

“You were always a good friend to me,” said 
Scrooge. “Thankee!” 

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, 
“by Three Spirits.” 

Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as 
the Ghost’s had done. 

“Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, 
Jacob?” he demanded in a faltering voice. 

“It is.” 

“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge. 

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you 
cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect 
the first to-morrow when the bell tolls One.” 

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have 
it over, Jacob?” hinted Scrooge. 

“Expect the second on the next night at the 
same hour. The third, upon the next night when 


zA CH'XJ STtMtA S C^%OL 

the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. 
Look to see me no more; and look that, for your 
own sake, you remember what has passed be¬ 
tween us!” 

When it had said these words, the spectre 
took its wrapper from the table, and bound it 
round its head as before. Scrooge knew this 
by the smart sound its teeth made when the 
jaws were brought together by the bandage. 
He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found 
his supernatural visitor confronting him in an 
erect attitude, with its chain wound over and 
about its arm. 

The apparition walked backward from him; 
and, at every step it took, the window raised 
itself a little, so that, when the spectre reached 
it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to 
approach, which he did. When they were within 
two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held 
up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. 
Scrooge stopped. 

Not so much in obedience as in surprise and 
fear; for, on the raising of the hand, he became 
sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent 
sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings in¬ 
expressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The 
spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in 
[ 31 ] 





CH%I STtMtA S C^XPL 

the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the 
bleak, dark night. 

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate 
in his curiosity. He looked out. 

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering 
hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning 
as they went. Every one of them wore chains 
like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be 
guilty governments) were linked together; none 
were free. Many had been personally known to 
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite 
familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, 
with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, 
who cried piteously at being unable to assist a 
wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw 
below upon a doorstep. The misery with them 
all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for 
good, in human matters, and had lost the power 
for ever. 

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or 
mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But 
they and their spirit voices faded together; and 
the night became as it had been when he walked 
home. 

Scrooge closed the window, and examined 
the door by which the Ghost had entered. It 
was double locked, as he had locked it with his 
[ 32 ] 


*A CHTtJ STzMzA S C^XPL 

own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. 
He tried to say “Humbug!” but stopped at the 
first syllable. And being, from the emotion he 
had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his 
glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull con¬ 
versation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the 
hour, much in need of repose, went straight to 
bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon 
the instant. 


[ 33 ] 















. 

' 






























4 • ' 


























, ' 1 ■ * I' i • 

... 

* 

. 








' 

































































, 1 : 

y 

- 



















































































STtAVS TWO 


THE FIRST OF THE 
THREE SPIRITS 

J/f/^ HEN Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that 
looking out of bed, he could scarcely 
distinguish the transparent window from the 
opaque walls of his chamber. He was en¬ 
deavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret 
eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church 
struck the four quarters. So he listened for 
the hour. 

To his great astonishment, the heavy bell 
went on from six to seven, and from seven to 
eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. 
Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. 
The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got 
into the works. Twelve! 

He touched the spring of his repeater, to 
correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid 
little pulse beat twelve, and stopped. 

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that 
I can have slept through a whole day and far 
into another night. It isn’t possible that any¬ 
thing has happened to the sun, and this is 
twelve at noon!” 


[ 35 ] 





CH'RJSTtMtAS C^X9 L 

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled 
out of bed, and groped his way to the window. 
He was obliged to rub the frost off with the 
sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see 
anything; and could see very little then. All 
he could make out was, that it was still very 
foggy and extremely cold, and that there was 
no noise of people running to and fro, and mak¬ 
ing a great stir, as there unquestionably would 
have been if night had beaten off* bright day, 
and taken possession of the world. This was a 
great relief, because “Three days after sight of 
this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer 
Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have 
become a mere United States security if there 
were no days to count by. 

Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and 
thought, and thought it over and over, and could 
make nothing of it. The more he thought, the 
more perplexed he was; and, the more he en¬ 
deavoured not to think, the more he thought. 

Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. 
Every time he resolved within himself, after 
mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his 
mind flew back again, like a strong spring re¬ 
leased, to its first position, and presented the 
[ 36 ] 


*A CH 1^1 S TzMtA S C^ c KP L 

same problem to be worked all through, “Was 
it a dream or not?” 

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had 
gone three quarters more, when he remembered, 
on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of 
a visitation when the bell tolled One. He re¬ 
solved to lie awake until the hour was passed; 
and, considering that he could no more go to 
sleep than go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the 
wisest resolution in his power. 

The quarter was so long, that he was more than 
once convinced he must have sunk into a doze 
unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length 
it broke upon his listening ear. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter past,” said Scrooge, counting. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“Half past,” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“A quarter to it,” said Scrooge. 

“Ding, dong!” 

“The hour itself,” said Scrooge triumphantly, 
“and nothing else!” 

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which 
it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy 
One. Light flashed up in the room upon the 
instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. 

[ 37 ] 


A CH'BJSTtMAS C*^X9L 

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I 
tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his 
feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to 
which his face was addressed. The curtains 
of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, start¬ 
ing up into a half-recumbent attitude, found 
himself face to face with the unearthly visitor 
who drew them: as close to it as I am now to 
you, and I am standing in the spirit at your 
elbow. 

It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not 
so like a child as like an old man, viewed through 
some supernatural medium, which gave him the 
appearance of having receded from the view, 
and being diminished to a child's proportions. 
Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its 
back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face 
had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom 
was on the skin. The arms were very long and 
muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold 
were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, 
most delicately formed, were, like those upper 
members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest 
white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous 
belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a 
branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in 
singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, 
[ 38 ] 


*A CH %I S T$ C^%PL 

had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. 
But the strangest thing about it was, that from 
the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear 
jet of light, by which all this was visible; and 
which was doubtless the occasion of its using, 
in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a 
cap, which it now held under its arm. 

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it 
with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest 
quality. For, as its belt sparkled and glittered, 
now in one part and now in another, and what 
was light one instant at another time was dark, 
so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: 
being now a thing with one arm, now with one 
leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs 
without a head, now a head without a body: of 
which dissolving parts no outline would be 
visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted 
away. And, in the very wonder of this, it would 
be itself again; distinct and clear as ever. 

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was 
foretold to me?” asked Scrooge. 

“I am!” 

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly 
low, as if, instead of being so close beside him, 
it were at a distance. 

“Who and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. 

[ 39 ] 




*A CHTtJ STtMtAS C^KP L 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” 

“Long Past?” inquired Scrooge; observant 
of its dwarfish stature. 

“No. Your past.” 

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody 
why, if anybody could have asked him; but he 
had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; 
and begged him to be covered. 

“What!” exclaimed the Ghost, “would you 
so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I 
give? Is it not enough that you are one of those 
whose passions made this cap, and force me 
through whole trains of years to wear it low 
upon my brow?” 

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to 
offend or any knowledge of having wilfully 
“bonneted” the Spirit at any period of his life. 
He then made bold to inqure what business 
brought him there. 

“Your welfare!” said the Ghost. 

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but 
could not help thinking that a night of unbroken 
rest would have been more conducive to that 
end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, 
for it said immediately: 

“Your reclamation, then. Take heed!” 

[ 40 ] 


zA CH%I ST'JW'A S CA%OL 

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and 
clasped him gently by the arm. 

“Rise! and walk with me!” 

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to 
plead that the weather and the hour were not 
adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was 
warm, and the thermometer a long way below 
freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his 
slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that 
he had a cold upon him at that time. The 
grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was 
not to be resisted. He rose: but, finding that 
the Spirit made towards the window, clasped 
its robe in supplication. 

“I am a mortal,” Scrooge remonstrated, “and 
liable to fall.” 

“Bear but a touch of my hand there” said 
the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you 
shall be upheld in more than this!” 

As the words were spoken, they passed through 
the wall, and stood upon an open country road, 
with fields on either hand. The city had entirely 
vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. 
The darkness and the mist had vanished with 
it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow 
upon the ground. 


[ 41 ] 


ch'KJSTiM'A s c^X9 L 

“Good Heaven!” said Scrooge, clasping his 
hands together, as he looked about him. “I was 
bred in this place. I was a boy here!” 

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle 
touch, though it had been light and instantan¬ 
eous, appeared still present to the old man's sense 
of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand 
odours floating in the air, each one connected 
with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, 
and cares long, long forgotten! 

“Your lip is trembling,” said the Ghost. 
“And what is that upon your cheek?” 

Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching 
in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged 
the Ghost to lead him where he would. 

“You recollect the way?” inquired the Spirit. 

“Remember it!” cried Scrooge with fervour; 
“I could walk it blindfold.” 

“Strange to have forgotten it for so many 
years!” observed the Ghost. “Let us go on.” 

They walked along the road, Scrooge recog¬ 
nizing every gate, and post, and tree, until a 
little market-town appeared in the distance, 
with its bridge, its church, and winding river. 
Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting 
towards them with boys upon their backs, who 
called to other boys in country gigs and carts, 
[ 42 ] 


zA CH%I STzMzA S 

driven by farmers. All these boys were in great 
spirits, and shouted to each other, until the 
broad fields were so full of merry music, that 
the crisp air laughed to hear it. 

“These are but shadows of the things that 
have been,” said the Ghost. “They have no 
consciousness of us.” 

The jocund travellers came on; and as they 
came, Scrooge knew and named them every 
one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds 
to see them? Why did his cold eye glisten, and 
his heart leap up as they went past? Why was 
he filled with gladness when he heard them give 
each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at 
cross-roads and by-ways for their several homes! 
What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out 
upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever 
done to him ? 

_ “The school is not quite deserted,” said the 
Ghost. “A solitary child, neglected by his 
friends, is left there still.” 

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed. 

They left the high-road by a well-remem¬ 
bered lane, and soon approached a mansion of 
dull red brick, with a little weather-cock sur¬ 
mounted cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging 
in it. It was a large house, but one of broken 
[ 43 ] 


of CHXJST^t^ S C^%9L 

fortunes: for the spacious offices were little 
used, their walls were damp and mossy, their 
windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls 
clucked and strutted in the stables; and the 
coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. 
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state 
within; for, entering the dreary hall, and glancing 
through the open doors of many rooms, they 
found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. 
There was an earthly savour in the air, a chilly 
bareness in the place, which associated itself 
somehow with too much getting up by candle¬ 
light, and not too much to eat. 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the 
hall, to a door at the back of the house. It 
opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare 
melancholy room, made barer still by lines of 
plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a 
lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and 
Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see 
his poor forgotten self as he had used to be. 

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak 
and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, 
not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in 
the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leaf¬ 
less boughs of one despondent poplar, not the 
idle swinging of an empty storehouse door, no, 
[ 44 ] 


*A CH%I STtMtA S C^X9 L 

not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart 
of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a 
freer passage to his tears. 

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and 
pointed to his younger self, intent upon his 
reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments: 
wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood 
outside the window, with an axe stuck in his 
belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden 
with wood. 

“Why, it’s Ali Baba!” Scrooge exclaimed 
in ecstasy. “It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! 
Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas-time, when 
yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he 
did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor 
boy! And Valentine,” said Scrooge, “and his 
wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's 
his name, who was put down in his drawers, 
asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don't you see 
him? And the Sultan's Groom turned upside 
down by the Genii: there he is upon his head! 
Serve him right! I'm glad of it. What business 
had he to be married to the Princess?” 

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness 
of his nature on such subjects, in a most extra¬ 
ordinary voice between laughing and crying; 
and to see his heightened and excited face; 

[ 45 ] 


zA CH'HJSTzMzA S C^ c KP l 

would have been a surprise to his business 
friends in the City, indeed. 

“There’s the Parrot!” cried Scrooge. “Green 
body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce 
growing out of the top of his head; there he is! 
Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he came 
home again after sailing round the island. ‘Poor 
Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin 
Crusoe?’ The man thought he was dreaming, 
but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. 
There goes Friday, running for his life to the 
little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!” 

Then, with a rapidity of transition very 
foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity 
for his former self, “Poor boy!” and cried again. 

“I wish,” Scrooge muttered, putting his hand 
in his pocket, and looking about him, after dry¬ 
ing his eyes with his cuff: “but it’s too late now.” 

“What is the matter?” asked the Spirit. 

“Nothing,” said Scrooge. “Nothing. There 
was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door 
last night. I should like to have given him 
something: that’s all.” 

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved 
its hand: saying, as it did so, “Let us see 
another Christmas!” 


[ 46 ] 


tA CH %IS TtMcA S C^KPL 

Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, 
and the room became a little darker and more 
dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; 
fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and 
the naked laths were shown instead; but how all 
this was brought about Scrooge knew no more 
than you do. He only knew that it was quite 
correct: that everything had happened so; that 
there he was, alone again, when all the other boys 
had gone home for the jolly holidays. 

He was not reading now, but walking up and 
down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, 
and, with a mournful shaking of his head, 
glanced anxiously towards the door. 

It opened; and a little girl, much younger 
than the boy, came darting in, and, putting her 
arms about his neck, and often kissing him, 
addressed him as her “dear, dear brother.” 

“I have come to bring you home, dear brother!” 
said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and 
bending down to laugh. “To bring you home, 
home, home!” 

“Home, little Fan?” returned the boy. 

“Yes!” said the child, brimful of glee. “Home 
for good and all. Home for ever and ever. 
Father is so much kinder than he used to be, 
that home’s like Heaven! He spoke so gently 
[ 47 ] 


*a ch^sTzM^s c^XP l 

to me one dear night when I was going to bed, 
that I was not afraid to ask him once more if 
you might come home; and he said Yes, you 
should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. 
And you're to be a man!” said the child, opening 
her eyes; “and are never to come back here; but 
first we’re to be together all the Christmas long, 
and have the merriest time in all the world.” 

“You are quite a woman, little Fan!” ex¬ 
claimed the boy. 

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried 
to touch his head; but, being too little, laughed 
again, and stood on tip-toe to embrace him. 
Then she began to drag him, in her childish 
eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing 
loath to go, accompanied her. 

A terrible voice in the hall cried, “Bring down 
Master Scrooge’s box, there!” and in the hall 
appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared 
on Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescen¬ 
sion, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind 
by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed 
him and his sister into the veriest old well of a 
shivering best parlour that ever was seen, where 
the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and 
terrestrial globes in the windows were waxy with 
cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously 


*A CH<BJ STzMtA S C^%S> L 

light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, 
and administered instalments of those dainties 
to the young people: at the same time sending 
out a meagre servant to offer a glass of “some¬ 
thing” to the postboy, who answered that he 
thanked the gentleman, but, if it was the same 
tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. 
Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time tied 
on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the 
schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and, 
getting into it, drove gaily down the garden 
sweep; the quick wheels dashing the hoar frost 
and snow from off the dark leaves of the ever¬ 
greens like spray. 

“Always a delicate creature, whom a breath 
might have withered,” said the Ghost. “But she 
had a large heart!” 

“So she had,” cried Scrooge. “You’re right. 
I will not gainsay it. Spirit. God forbid!” 

“She died a woman,” said the Ghost, “and 
had, as I think, children.” 

“One child,” Scrooge returned. 

“True,” said the Ghost. “Your nephew!” 

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and 
answered briefly, “Yes.” 

Although they had but that moment left the 
school behind them, they were now in the busy 
[ 49 ] 


*A CH'XJSTtMzA S C^%9 L 
thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy pas¬ 
sengers passed and repassed; where shadowy 
carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the 
strife and tumult of a real city were. It was 
made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, 
that here, too, it was Christmas-time again; but 
it was evening, and the streets were lighted up. 

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse 
door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it. 

“Know it!” said Scrooge. “Was I apprenticed 
here!” 

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman 
in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, 
that if he had been two inches taller, he must 
have knocked his head against the ceiling, 
Scrooge cried in great excitement: 

“Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, 
it’s Fezziwig alive again!” 

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked 
up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of 
seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his 
capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, 
from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and 
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat jovial 
voice: 

“Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!” 

[ 50 ] 


iA CH<RJ STzMzAS C^KPL 

Scrooge's former self, now grown a young 
man, came briskly in, accompanied by his 
fellow 'prentice. 

“Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to 
the Ghost. “Bless me, yes. There he is. He 
was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor 
Dick! Dear, dear!" 

“Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. “No more 
work to-night. Christmas-eve, Dick. Christ¬ 
mas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," 
cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands 
“before a man can say Jack Robinson!" 

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows 
went at it! They charged into the street with 
the shutters—one, two, three—had 'em up in 
their places—four, five, six—barred ’em and 
pinned 'em—seven, eight, nine—and came back 
before you could have got to twelve, panting 
like race-horses. 

“Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down 
from the high desk with wonderful agility. 
“Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of 
room here! Hilli-ho, Dick. Chirrup, Ebenezer!" 

Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't 
have cleared away, or couldn't have cleared 
away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done 
in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as 
[ 51 ] 



*A CH'BJSTtM'A S C^XPL 

if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; 
the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were 
trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the 
warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and 
bright a ballroom as you would desire to see 
upon a winter’s night. 

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went 
up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, 
and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came 
Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In 
came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and 
lovable. In came the six young followers whose 
hearts they broke. In came all the young men 
and women employed in the business. In came 
the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In 
came the cook, with her brother’s particular 
friend, the milkman. In came the boy from 
over the way, who was suspected of not having 
board enough from his master; trying to hide 
himself behind the girl from next door but one, 
who was proved to have had her ears pulled by 
her mistress. In they all came, one after another 
some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some 
awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they 
all came, any how and every how. Away they 
all went, twenty couple at once; hands half 
round and back again the other way; down the 
[ 52 ] 


*A CH'RJ STzMtA S C^KP L 

middle and up again; round and round in various 
stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple 
always turning up in the wrong place; new top 
couple starting off again as soon as they got 
there; all top couples at last and not a bottom 
one to help them! When this result was brought 
about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop 
the dance, cried out, “Well done!” and the 
fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, 
especially provided for that purpose. But, 
scorning rest upon his reappearance, he instantly 
began again, though there were no dancers yet, 
as if the other fiddler had been carried home, 
exhausted on a shutter, and he were a bran-new 
man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish. 

There were more dances, and there were for¬ 
feits, and more dances, and there was cake, and 
there was negus, and there was a great piece of 
Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold 
Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty 
of beer. But the great effect of the evening came 
after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler 
(an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew 
his business better than you or I could have told 
it him!) struck up “Sir Roger de Coverley.” 
Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. 
Fezziwig. Top couple too; with a good stiff 
[ 53 ] 


CH%I STtMtAS C^KP L 

piece of work cut out for them; three or four and 
twenty pair of partners; people who were not to 
be trifled with; people who would dance, and had 
no notion of walking. 

But if they had been twice as many—ah! 
four times—old Fezziwig would have been a 
match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. 
As to her> she was worthy to be his partner in 
every sense of the term. If that’s not high 
praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive 
light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. 
They shone in every part of the dance like moons. 
You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, 
what would become of them next. And when 
old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all 
through the dance; advance and retire, both 
hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, cork¬ 
screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your 
place; Fezziwig “cut”—cut so deftly, that he 
appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon 
his feet again without a stagger. 

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic 
ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their 
stations, one on either side the door, and shaking 
hands with every person individually as he or 
she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christ¬ 
mas. When everybody had retired but the two 
[ 54 ] 


<A Ch%i sr<MtAs c^XPL 

’prentices, they did the same to them; and thus 
the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were 
left to their beds; which were under a counter in 
the back-shop. 

During the whole of this time Scrooge had 
acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and 
soul were in the scene, and with his former self. 
He corroborated everything, remembered every¬ 
thing, enjoyed everything, and underwent the 
strangest agitation. It was not until now, when 
the bright faces or his former self and Dick were 
turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, 
and became conscious that it was looking full 
upon him, while the light upon its head burnt 
very clear. 

“A small matter,” said the Ghost, “to make 
these silly folks so full of gratitude.” 

“Small!” echoed Scrooge. 

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two 
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts 
in praise of Fezziwig; and, when he had done 
so, said: 

“Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few 
pounds of your mortal money: three or four, 
perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves 
this praise?” 


[ 55 ] 




*A CH'XJSTtMzA S C^KP L 

“It isn't that/’ said Scrooge, heated by the 
remark, and speaking unconsciously like his 
former, not his latter, self. “It isn't that, Spirit. 
He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; 
to make our service light or burdensome; a 
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in 
words and looks; in things so slight and insig¬ 
nificant that it is impossible to add and count 
'em up: what then? The happiness he gives 
is quite as great as if it cost a fortune." 

He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped. 

“What is the matter?" asked the Ghost. 

“Nothing particular," said Scrooge. 

“Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted. 

“No," said Scrooge, “no. I should like to be 
able to *say a word or two to my clerk just now. 
That's all." 

His former self turned down the lamps as 
he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge 
and the Ghost again stood side by side in the 
open air. 

“My time grows short," observed the Spirit. 
“Quick!" 

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any 
one whom he could see, but it produced an im¬ 
mediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. 
He was older now; a man in the prime of life. 

[ 56 ] 


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*4 CH'BJST'M'AS C^I%OL 

His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later 
years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care 
and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, rest¬ 
less motion in the eye, which showed the passion 
that had taken root, and where the shadow of the 
growing tree would fall. 

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair 
young girl in a mourning dress: in whose eyes 
there were tears, which sparkled in the light that 
shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past. 

“It matters little,” she said softly. “To you, 
very little. Another Idol has displaced me; and, 
if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come 
as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause 
to grieve.” 

“What Idol has displaced you?” he rejoined. 

“A golden one.” 

“This is the even-handed dealing of the 
world!” he said. “There is nothing on which it 
is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it 
professes to condemn with such severity as the 
pursuit of wealth!” 

“You fear the world too much,” she answered 
gently. “All your other hopes have merged into 
the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid 
reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations 
[57] 


ot C^KP L 

fall off one by one, until the master passion, 
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?” 

“What then?” he retorted. “Even if I have 
grown so much wiser, what then? I am not 
changed towards you.” 

She shook her head. 

“Am I?” 

“Our contract is an old one. It was made 
when we were both poor, and content to be so, 
until, in good season, we could improve our 
worldly fortune by our patient industry. You 
are changed. When it was made you were 
another man.” 

“I was a boy,” he said impatiently. 

“Your own feeling tells you that you were not 
what you are,” she returned. “I am. That 
which promised happiness when we were one in 
heart is fraught with misery now that we are two. 
How often and how keenly I have thought of 
this I will not say. It is enough that I have 
thought of it, and can release you.” 

“Have I ever sought release?” 

“In words. No. Never.” 

“In what, then?” 

“In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in 
another atmosphere of life; another Hope as 
its great end. In everything that made my love 
[58] 


*4 CH %IS T<iMzA S C^%S> L 

of any worth or value in your sight. If this had 
never been between us,” said the girl, looking 
mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; “tell me, 
would you seek me out and try to win me now? 
Ah, no!” 

He seemed to yield to the justice of this sup¬ 
position in spite of himself. But he said, with a 
struggle, “You think not.” 

“I would gladly think otherwise if I could,” 
she answered. “Heaven knows! When / have 
learned a Truth like this, I know how strong 
and irresistible it must be. But if you were 
free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I 
believe that you would choose a dowerless girl— 
you who, in your very confidence with her, 
weigh everthing by Gain: or, choosing her, if 
for a moment you were false enough to your one 
guiding principle to do so, do I not know that 
your repentance and regret would surely follow? 
I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for 
the love of him you once were.” 

He was about to speak; but, with her head 
turned from him, she resumed: 

“You may—the memory of what is past half 
makes me hope you will—have pain in this. 
A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the 
recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable 
[59] 


*A CH %I S TzMzA S C^KP L 

dream, from which it happened well that you 
awoke. May you be happy in the life you have 
chosen!” 

She left him, and they parted. 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, “show me no more! 
Conduct me home. Why do you delight to 
torture me?” 

“One shadow more!” exclaimed the Ghost. 

“No more!” cried Scrooge. “No more! I 
don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!” 

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both 
his arms, and forced him to observe what 
happened next. 

They were in another scene and place; a room 
not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. 
Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young 
girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was 
the same, until he saw her , now a comely matron, 
sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this 
room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were 
more children there than Scrooge in his agitated 
state of mind could count; and, unlike the 
celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty 
children conducting themselves like one, but 
every child was conducting itself like forty. 
The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; 
but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the 
[ 60 ] 


^ CH ‘RJ S TzMzA S 

mother and daughter laughed heartily, and 
enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon 
beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged 
by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What 
would I not have given to be one of them! 
Though I never could have been so rude, no no! 
I wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have 
crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; 
and, for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t have 
plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. 
As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, 
bold young brood, I couldn’t have done it; I 
should have expected my arm to have grown 
round it for a punishment, and never come 
straight again. And yet I should have dearly 
liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have 
questioned her, that she might have opened 
them; to have looked upon the lashes of her 
downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have 
let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would 
be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should 
have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest 
licence of a child, and yet to have been man 
enough to know its value. 

But now a knocking at the door was heard, 
and such a rush immediately ensued that she, 
with laughing face and plundered dress, was 
[ 61 ] 


zA CH'ZJ STtMzAS C^XP L 

borne towards it in the centre of a flushed and 
boisterous group, just in time to greet the 
father, who came home attended by a man laden 
with Christmas toys and presents. Then the 
shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught 
that was made on the defenceless porter! The 
scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into 
his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, 
hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the 
neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in ir¬ 
repressible affection! The shouts of wonder and 
delight with which the development of every 
package was received! The terrible announce¬ 
ment that the baby had been taken in the act of 
putting a doll’s frying-pan into his mouth, and 
was more than suspected of having swallowed 
a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! 
The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! 
The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are 
all indescribable alike. It is enough that, by 
degrees, the children and their emotions got out 
of the parlour, and, by one stair at a time, up to 
the top of the house, where they went to bed, 
and so subsided. 

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively 
than ever, when the master of the house, having 
his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down 
[62] 


*a ch%i srjuCtA s c^%S> L 

with her and her mother at his own fireside; 
and when he thought that such another crea¬ 
ture, quite as graceful and as full of promise, 
might have called him father, and been a spring¬ 
time in the haggard winter of his life, his sight 
grew very dim indeed. 

“Belle,” said the husband, turning to his wife 
with a smile, “I saw an old friend of yours this 
afternoon.” 

“Who was it?” 

“Guess!” 

“How can I? Tut, don’t I know?” she added 
in the same breath, laughing as he laughed, 
“Mr. Scrooge.” 

“Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office 
window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a 
candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. 
His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; 
and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, 
I do believe.” 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge in a broken voice, 
“remove me from this place.” 

“I told you these were shadows of the things 
that have been,” said the Ghost. “That they 
are what they are, do not blame me!” 

“Remove me!” Scrooge exclaimed. “I can¬ 
not bear it!’ 


[ 63 ] 


CH%I STtMtA S 

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it 
looked upon him with a face in which in some 
strange way there were fragments of all the faces 
it had shown him, wrestled with it. 

“Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no 
longer!” 

In the struggle—if that can be called a struggle, 
in which the Ghost, with no visible resistance on 
its own part, was undisturbed by any effort of its 
adversary—Scrooge observed that its light was 
burning high and bright and dimly connecting 
that with its influence over him, he seized the 
extinguisher cap, and by a sudden action pressed 
it down upon its head. 

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the ex¬ 
tinguisher covered its whole form; but, though 
Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he 
could not hide the light, which streamed from 
under it in an unbroken flood upon the ground. 

He was conscious of being exhausted, and 
overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, 
further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave 
the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand 
relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed be¬ 
fore he sank into a heavy sleep. 


[ 64 ] 



THE SECOND OF THE 
THREE SPIRITS 

/^WAKING in the middle of a prodigiously 
Q^/JL tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get 
his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion 
to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke 
of One. He felt that he was restored to con¬ 
sciousness in the right nick of time, for the 
especial purpose of holding a conference with 
the second messenger dispatched to him through 
Jacob Marley’s intervention. But, finding that 
he turned uncomfortably cold when he began 
to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre 
would draw back, he put them every one aside 
with his own hands, and, lying down again, 
established a sharp look-out all round the bed. 
For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the 
moment of its appearance, and did not wish to 
be taken by surprise and made nervous. 

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who 
plume themselves on being acquainted with a 
move or two, and being usually equal to the 
time of day, express the wide range of their 
capacity for adventure by observing that they 
good for anything from pitch-and-toss to 
[65] 


are 









CH‘RJS TzMzA S 

manslaughter; between which opposite ex¬ 
tremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide 
and comprehensive range of subjects. Without 
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I 
don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was 
ready for a good broad field of strange appear¬ 
ances, and that nothing between a baby and a 
rhinoceros would have astonished him very much. 
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he 
was not by any means prepared for nothing; and 
consequently, when the bell struck One, and no 
shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit 
of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a 
quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. 
All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core 
and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which 
streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the 
hour; and which, being only light, was more 
alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was power¬ 
less to make out what it meant, or would be at; 
and was sometimes apprehensive that he might 
be at that very moment an interesting case of 
spontaneous combustion, without have the con¬ 
solation of knowing it. At last, however, he 
began to think—as you or I would have thought 
at first; for it is always the person not in the 
predicament who knows what ought to have been 


*A CH'HJ STtMzA S C^%9 L 

done in it, and would unquestionably have done 
it too—at last, I say, he began to think that the 
source and secret of this ghostly light might be 
in the adjoining room, from whence, on further 
tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking 
full possession of his mind, he got up softly, and 
shuffled in his slippers to the door. 

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, 
a strange voice called him by his name, and bade 
him enter. He obeyed. 

It was his own room. There was no doubt 
about that. But it had undergone a surprising 
transformation. The walls and ceiling were so 
hung with living green, that it looked a perfect 
grove; from every part of which bright gleaming 
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, 
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if 
so many little mirrors had been scattered there; 
and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the 
chimney as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had 
never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley s, or 
for many and many a winter season gone, 
Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, 
were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great 
joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of 
sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of 
oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, 
[67] 


*A CH%I ST<MA S C^%PL 

juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth- 
cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made 
the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In 
easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly 
Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, 
in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, 
high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came 
peeping round the door. 

“Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! 
and know me better, man!" 

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head 
before this spirit. He was not the dogged 
Scrooge he had been; and, though the Spirit's 
eyes were clean and kind, he did not like to 
meet them. 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said 
the Spirit. “Look upon me!" 

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in 
one simple deep green robe, or mantel, bordered 
with white fur. This garment hung so loosely 
on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, 
as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by 
any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the 
ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and 
on its head it wore no other covering than a 
holly wreath, set here and there with shining 
icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; 

[ 68 ] 


CHTtJ STJWtA S C^'KPL 

free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open 
hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained de¬ 
meanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its 
middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword 
was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up 
with rust. 

“You have never seen the like of me before!” 
exclaimed the Spirit. 

“Never,” Scrooge made answer to it. 

“Have never walked forth with the younger 
members of my family; meaning (for I am very 
young) my elder brothers born in these later 
years?” pursued the Phantom. 

“I don't think I have,” said Scrooge. “I am 
afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, 
Spirit?” 

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the 
Ghost. 

“A tremendous family to provide for,” mut¬ 
tered Scrooge. 

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose. 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge submissively, “conduct 
me where you will. I went forth last night on 
compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is work¬ 
ing now. To-night, if you have aught to teach 
me, let me profit by it.” 

“Touch my robe!” 


[ 69 ] 


C^KPL 

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. 

Holly, mistletoe, red-berries, ivy, turkeys, 
geese, game, poultry, brawn meat, pigs, sausages, 
oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all 
vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, 
the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood 
in the city streets on Christmas morning, where 
(for the weather was severe) the people made a 
rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of 
music, in scraping the snow from the pavement 
in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of 
their houses, whence it was mad delight to the 
boys to see it come plumping down into the road 
below, and splitting into artificial little snow¬ 
storms. 

The house-fronts looked black enough, and 
the windows blacker, contrasting with the 
smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and 
with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which 
last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows 
by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons; fur¬ 
rows that crossed and recrossed each other 
hundreds of times where the great streets 
branched off; and made intricate channels, hard 
to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. 
The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets 
were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, 
[ 70 ] 


*A CH'ZJST'MAS C^XPL 

half frozen, whose heavier particles descended 
in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys 
in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught 
fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts' 
content. There was nothing very cheerful in the 
climate or the town, and yet was there an air of 
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air 
and brightest summer sun might have endeav¬ 
oured to diffuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on 
the housetops were jovial and full of glee; 
calling out to one another from the parapets, 
and now and then exchanging a facetious snow¬ 
ball—better-natured missile far than many a 
wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right, 
and not less, heartily if it went wrong. The 
poulterers' shops were still half open, and the 
fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There 
were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chest¬ 
nuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old 
gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling 
out into the street in their apopletic opulence. 
There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed 
Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their 
growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from 
fheir shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as 
they went by, and glanced demurely at the 
[ 71 ] 


*A CH'RJ STzMtAS C^XPL 
hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples 
clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were 
bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ 
benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks 
that people’s mouths might water gratis as they 
passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and 
brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient 
walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings 
ankle deep through withered leaves; there were 
Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off 
the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in 
the great compactness of their juicy persons 
urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried 
home in paper bags, and eaten after dinner. 
The very gold and silver fish, set forth among 
these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of 
a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to 
know that there was something going on; and, 
to a fish, went gasping round and round their 
little world in slow and passionless excitement. 

The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, 
with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but 
through those gaps such glimpses! It was not 
alone that the scales descending on the counter 
made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller 
parted company so briskly, or that the canisters 
were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, 
[ 72 ] 


CH^I STtMtA S C^XPL 

or even that the blended sc , nts of tea and coffee 
were so grateful to the nose, or even that the 
raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds 
so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so 
long and straight, the other spices so delicious, 
the candied fruits so caked and spotted with 
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on 
feel faint, and subsequently bilious. Nor was it 
that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the 
French plums blushed in modest tartness from 
their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything 
was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but 
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in 
the hopeful promise of the day, that they 
tumbled up against each other at the door, 
crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left 
their purchases upon the counter, and came 
running back to fetch them, and committed 
hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour 
possible; while the Grocer and his people were 
so frank and fresh, that the polished hearts with 
which they fastened their aprons behind might 
have been their own, worn outside for general 
inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at 
if they chose. 

, But soon the steeples called good people all 
to church and chapel, and away they came, 
[ 73 ] 


CH%IS r<M<AS C^XP L 

flocking through the streets in their best clothes, 
and with their gayest faces. And at the same 
time there emerged, from scores of by-streets, 
lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, 
carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The 
sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest 
the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge 
beside him in a baker's doorway, and, taking off 
the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled 
incense on their dinners from his torch. And it 
was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or 
twice, when there were angry words between 
some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, 
he shed a few drops of water on them from it, 
and their good-humour was restored directly. 
For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon 
Christmas-day. And so it was! God love it, 
so it was! 

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were 
shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing 
forth of all these dinners, and the progress of 
their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above 
each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked 
as if its stones were cooking too. 

“Is there a peculiar flavour in what you 
sprinkle from your torch?" asked Scrooge. 

“There is. My own." 

[ 74 ] 


C H %I S TzMzA S C^XPL 

“Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this 
day?” asked Scrooge. 

“To any kindly given. To a poor one most.” 

“Why to a poor one most?” asked Scrooge. 

“Because it needs it most.” 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge after a moment's 
thought. “I wonder you, of all the beings in 
the many worlds about us, should desire to 
cramp these people's opportunities of innocent 
enjoyment.” 

“I!” cried the Spirit. 

“You would deprive them of their means of 
dining every seventh day, often the only day on 
which they can be said to dine at all,” said 
Scrooge; “wouldn't you?” 

“I!” cried the Spirit. 

“You seek to close these places on the Seventh 
Day,” said Scrooge. “And it comes to the same 
thing.” 

“/ seek!” exclaimed the Spirit. 

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done 
in your name, or at least in that of your family,” 
said Scrooge. 

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” 
returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, 
and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, 
hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our 
[ 75 ] 


*A CH'KJ STtMtA S C^KPL 

name, who are as strange to us, and all our kith 
and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember 
that, and charge their doings on themselves, 
not us.” 

Scrooge promised that he would; and they 
went on, invisible, as they had been before, into 
the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable 
quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had ob¬ 
served at the baker’s), that, notwithstanding 
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself 
to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath 
a low roof quite as gracefully and like a super¬ 
natural creature as it was possible he could have 
done in any lofty hall. 

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit 
had in showing off this power of his, or else it 
was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and 
his sympathy with all poor men, that led him 
straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he went, 
and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; 
and, on the threshold of the door, the Spirit 
smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s 
dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch. Think 
of that! Bob had but fifteen “Bob” a week 
himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen 
copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost 
(76J 


*A CH‘ZJ STtMzA S C^XOL 

of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed 
house! 

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, 
dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, 
but brave in ribbons, which are cheap, and make 
a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the 
cloth assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her 
daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master 
Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan 
of potatoes, and getting the corners of his mon¬ 
strous shirt collar (Bob’s private property, con¬ 
ferred upon his son and heir in honour of the 
day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so 
gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen 
in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller 
Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, scream¬ 
ing that outside the baker’s they had smelt the 
goose, and known it for their own; and, basking 
in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these 
young Cratchits danced about the table, and 
exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while 
he (not proud, although his collars nearly 
choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, 
bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan 
lid to be let out and peeled. 

“What has ever got your precious father, 
then?” said Mrs. Cratchit. “And your brother, 
[77] 


of CHTtJ STtMtA S C^%9 L 

Tiny Tim? And Martha warn’t as late last 
Christmas-day by half an hour!” 

“Here’s Martha, mother!” said a girl, appear¬ 
ing as she spoke. 

“Here’s Martha, mother!” cried the two young 
Cratchits. “Hurrah! There’s such a goose, 
Martha!” 

“Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how 
late you are!” said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a 
dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet 
for her with officious zeal. 

“We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,” 
replied the girl, “and had to clear away this 
morning, mother!” 

“Well! never mind so long as you are come,” 
said Mrs. Cratchit. “Sit ye down before the 
fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!” 

“No, no! There’s father coming,” cried the 
two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at 
once. “Hide, Martha, hide!” 

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, 
the father, with at least three feet of comforter, 
exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before 
him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and 
brushed to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon 
his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little 
[78] 


CHTSJS TzMtA S C^%S> L 

crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron 
frame! 

“Why, where’s our Martha?” cried Bob 
Cratchit, looking round. 

“Not coming,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“Not coming!” said Bob with a sudden de¬ 
clension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s 
blood horse all the way from church, and had 
come home rampant. “Not coming upon Christ- 
mas-day!” 

Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, 
if it were only in joke; so she came out pre¬ 
maturely from behind the closet door, and ran 
into his arms, while the two young Cratchits 
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the 
wash-house, that he might hear the pudding 
singing in the copper. 

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs. 
Cratchit when she had rallied Bob on his cre¬ 
dulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his 
heart’s content. 

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. 
Somehow, he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself 
so much, and thinks the strangest things you 
ever heard. He told me, coming home, that 
he hoped the people saw him in the church, be¬ 
cause he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant 
[79] 


*A CH%ISr<M<A S C^XpL 

to them to remember upon Christmas-day who 
made lame beggars walk and blind men see.” 

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them 
this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny 
Tim was growing strong and hearty. 

His active little crutch was heard upon the 
floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another 
word was spoken, escorted by his brother and 
sister to his stool beside the fire; and while 
Bob, turning up his cuffs—as if, poor fellow, 
they were capable of being made more shabby 
—compounded some hot mixture in a jug with 
gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round, 
and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter 
and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went 
to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned 
in high procession. 

Such a bustle ensued that you might have 
thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered 
phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter 
of course—and, in truth, it was something very 
like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the 
gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) 
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes 
with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened 
up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot 
plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny 
[ 80 ] 



MRS. CRATCHIT ENTERED—FLUSHED, BUT 
SMILING PROUDLY—WITH THE PUDDING, 
LIKE A SPECKLED CANNON-BALL 

Page 82 








































































• . 

*y 




















* 


1 






























zA CH'RJ STzMzAS C^%9 L 

corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set 
chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, 
and, mounting guard upon their posts, crammed 
spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek 
for goose before their turn came to be helped. 
At last the dishes were set on, and grace was 
said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as 
Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carv¬ 
ing-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; 
but when she did, and when the long-expected 
gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of de¬ 
light arose all round the board, and even Tiny 
Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat 
on the table with the handle of his knife, and 
feebly cried Hurrah! 

There never was such a goose. Bob said he 
didn’t believe there ever was such a goose 
cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and 
cheapness, were the themes of universal admira¬ 
tion. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed 
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole 
family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great 
delight (surveying one small atom of a bone 
upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! 
Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest 
Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage 
and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates 
[ 81 ] 


CH'KJST'M'A S C^KP L 

being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit 
left the room alone—too nervous to bear wit¬ 
nesses—to take the pudding up, and bring it in. 

Suppose it should not be done enough! Sup¬ 
pose it should break in turning out. Suppose 
somebody should have got over the wall of the 
back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry 
with the goose—a supposition at which the two 
young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of 
horrors were supposed. 

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding 
was out of the copper. A smell like a washing- 
day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eat¬ 
ing-house and a pastry cook's next door to each 
other, with a laundress's next door to that! That 
was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit 
entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with 
the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard 
and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of 
ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas 
holly stuck into the top. 

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, 
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the great¬ 
est success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since 
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now 
the weight was off her mind, she would confess 
she had her doubts about the quantity of flour. 



“A MERRY CHRISTMAS 
TO US ALL, MY DEARS. 
GOD BLESS US!” 

Page 83 


























c H< KI s s c^KP l 

Everybody had something to say about it, but 
nobody said or thought it was at all a small 
pudding for a large family. It would have been 
flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have 
blushed to hint at such a thing. 

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was 
cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. 
The compound in the jug being tasted, and 
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put 
upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts 
on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew 
round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a 
circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit s 
elbow stood the family display of glass. Two 
tumblers and a custard cup without a handle. 

These held the hot stuff from the jug, how¬ 
ever, as well as golden goblets would have 
done; and Bob served it out with beaming 
looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered 
and cracked noisly. Then Bob proposed: 

“A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. 
God bless us!” 

Which all the family re-echoed. 

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, 
the last of all. 

He sat very close to his father’s side, upon 
his little stool. Bob held his withered little 
[83] 


iA CH'FJST'M'AS C^KPL 

hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished 
to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he 
might be taken from him. 

“Spirit,” said Scrooge with an interest he had 
never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.” 

“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in 
the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without 
an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows 
remain unaltered by the Future, the child will 
die.” 

“No, no,” said Scrooge. “Oh no, kind Spirit! 
say he will be spared.” 

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the 
Future, none other of my race,” returned the 
Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If 
he be like to die, he had better do it, and de¬ 
crease the surplus population.” 

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words 
quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with 
penitence and grief. 

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in 
heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant 
until you have discovered What the surplus is, 
and Where it is. Will you decide what men 
shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, 
in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless 
and less fit to live than millions like this poor 
[84] 


zA CH^STzMzAS C^%9 l 

man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on 
the leaf pronouncing on the too much life 
among his hungry brothers in the dust!" 

Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and 
trembling, cast his eyes upon the ground. But 
he raised them speedily on hearing his own name. 

“Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. “I’ll give you Mr. 
Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!" 

“The Founder of the Feast, indeed!" cried 
Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. “I wish I had him 
here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast 
upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it." 

“My dear," said Bob, “the children! Christ- 
mas-day." 

“It should be Christmas-day, I am sure," 
said she, “on which one drinks the health of such 
an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. 
Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody 
knows it better than you do, poor fellow! 

“My dear!" was Bob's mild answer. “Christ- 
mas-day.” 

“I'll drink his health for your sake and the 
Day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, “not for his. Long 
life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy 
New Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, 
I have no doubt!" 


[ 85 ] 


<A CH%I STtMtA S C^KPL 

The children drank the toast after her. It 
was the first of their proceedings which had no 
heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, 
but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge 
was the Ogre of the family. The mention of 
his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which 
was not dispelled for full five minutes. 

After it had passed away they were ten times 
merrier than before, from the mere relief of 
Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob 
Cratchit told them how he had a situation in 
his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, 
if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The 
two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at 
the idea of Peter’s being a man of business; and 
Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire 
from between his collars, as if he were deliberat¬ 
ing what particular investments he should favour 
when he came into the receipt of that bewilder¬ 
ing income. Martha, who was a poor appren¬ 
tice at a milliner’s, then told them what kind 
of work she had to do, and how many hours 
she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to 
lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long 
rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at 
home. Also how she had seen a countess and 
a lord some days before, and how the lord “was 
[ 86 ] 


*A CH^ISTtMtAS C^XPL 

much about as tall as Peter,” at which Peter 
pulled up his collars so high, that you couldn t 
have seen his head if you had been there. All 
this time the chestnuts and the jug went round 
and round; and by-and-by they had a song, 
about a lost child travelling in the snow, from 
Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and 
sang it very well indeed. . 

There was nothing of high mark in this. 
They were not a handsome family; they were 
not well dressed; their shoes were far from 
being waterproof; their clothes were scanty and 
Peter might have known, and very likely did, 
the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But they were 
happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and 
contented with the time; and when they faded, 
and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings 
of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his 
eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until 

the last. , 

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing 

pretty heavily; and, as Scrooge and the Spirit 
went along the streets, the brightness of the 
roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sort 
of rooms was wonderful. Here the flickering of 
the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner 
with hot plates baking through and through 
[871 





zA CHTtJ STtMtA S 

before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to 
be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There, 
all the children of the house were running out 
into the snow to meet their married sisters, 
brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the 
first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows 
on the window blinds of guests assembling; and 
there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and 
fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped 
lightly off to some near neighbour’s house; where, 
woe upon the single man who saw them enter— 
artful witches, well they knew it—in a glow! 

But, if you had judged from the number of 
people on their way to friendly gatherings, you 
might have thought that no one was at home to 
give them welcome when they got there, instead 
of every house expecting company and piling 
up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, 
how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its 
breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, 
and floated on, outpouring, with a generous 
hand, its bright and harmless mirth on every¬ 
thing within its reach! The very lamp-lighter, 
who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with 
specks of light, and who was dressed to spend 
the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as 
[ 88 ] 


*A CH^ISTzMAS C^%S> l 

the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamp¬ 
lighter that he had any company but Christmas. 

And now, without a word of warning from 
the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert 
moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone 
were cast about, as though it were the burial- 
place of giants; and water spread itself where¬ 
soever it listed; or would have done so, but for 
the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing 
grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. 
Down in the west the setting sun had left a 
streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desola¬ 
tion for an instant, like a sullen eye, and, frown¬ 
ing lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick 
gloom of darkest night. 

“What place is this?” asked Scrooge. 

“A place where miners live, who labour in 
the bowels of the earth,” returned the Spirit. 
“But they know me. See!” 

A light shone from the window of a hut, and 
swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing 
through the wall of mud and stone, they found 
a cheerful company assembled round a glowing 
fire. An old, old man and woman, with their 
children and their children’s children, and 
another generation beyond that, all decked out 
gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a 
(891 


*A CH'XJSTzMzAS C^XPL 

voice that seldom rose above the howling of the 
wind upon the barren waste, was singing them 
a Christmas song; it had been a very old song 
when he was a boy; and from time to time they 
all joined in the chorus. So surely as they 
raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe 
and loud; and, so surely as they stopped, his 
vigour sank again. 

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade 
Scrooge hold his robe, and, passing on above 
the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. 
To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the 
last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind 
them; and his ears were deafened by the thunder¬ 
ing of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged 
among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and 
fiercely tried to undermine the earth. 

Built upon a dismal reef of sunkea rocks, 
some league or so from shore, on which the 
waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, 
there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps 
of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds— 
born of the wind, one might suppose, as sea¬ 
weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like 
the waves they skimmed. 

But, even here, two men who watched the 
light, had made a fire, that through the loop- 
[90] 


of CH %I STtMzA S C^X9 L 

hole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of 
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny 
hands over the rough table at which they sat, 
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their 
can of grog; and one of them: the elder too, with 
his face all damaged and scarred with hard weath¬ 
er, as the figurehead of an old ship might be: struck 
up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself. 

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black 
and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, 
as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted 
on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at 
the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers 
who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in 
their several stations; but every man among 
them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a 
Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath 
to his companion of some bygone Christmas- 
day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. 
And every man on board, waking or sleeping, 
good or bad, had had a kinder word for one 
another on that day than on any day in the 
year; and had shared to some extent in its 
festivities; and had remembered those he cared 
for at a distance, and had known that they 
delighted to remember him. 

[ 91 ] 


CH'HJSTtM'AS C^%OL 

It was a great surprise to Scrooge* while 
listening to the moaning of the wind, and think¬ 
ing what a solemn thing it was to move on 
through the lonely darkness over an unknown 
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound 
as death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, 
while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It 
was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to rec¬ 
ognise it as his own nephew's, and to find himself 
in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit 
standing smiling by his side, and looking at that 
same nephew with approving affability. 

“Ha, ha!” laughed Scrooge’s nephew. “Ha, 
ha, ha!” 

If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, 
to know a man more blessed in a laugh than 
Scrooge’s nephew, all I can say is, I should like 
to know him too. Introduce him to me, and 
I’ll cultivate his acquaintance. 

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment 
of things, that, while there is infection in disease 
and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so 
irresistibly contagious as laughter and good- 
humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in 
this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and 
twisting his face into the most extravagant con¬ 
tortions: Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed 
[92] 


<A CH%I STtMiA S C'^'KPL 

as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, 
being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily. 

“Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!” 

“He said that Christmas was a humbug, as 
I live!” cried Scrooge’s nephew. “He believed 
it, too!” 

“More shame for him, Fred!” said Scrooge’s 
niece indignantly. Bless those women! they 
never do anything by halves. They are always 
in earnest. 

She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. 
With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; 
a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be 
kissed—as no doubt it was; all kinds of good 
little dots about her chin, that melted into one 
another when she laughed; and the sunniest 
pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s 
head. Altogether she was what you would have 
called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, 
too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory! 

“He’s a comical old fellow,” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, “that’s the truth; and not so pleasant 
as he might be. However, his offences carry 
their own punishment, and I have nothing to 
say against him.” 

“I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,” hinted 
Scrooge’s niece. “At least you always tell me so.” 

[ 93 ] 


i 


*A CHT^ISTtMtA S C^XPL 

“What of that, my dear?” said Scrooge's 
nephew. “His wealth is of no use to him. He 
don't do any good with it. He don't make 
himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the 
satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!—that he 
is ever going to benefit Us with it.” 

“I have no patience with him,” observed 
Scrooge’s niece. Scrooge’s niece's sisters, and 
all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion. 

“Oh, I have!” said Scrooge's nephew. “I am 
sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if 
I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself 
always. Here he takes it into his head to dislike 
us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's 
the consequence? He don't lose much of a 
dinner.” 

“Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,” 
interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else 
said the same, and they must be allowed to have 
been competent judges, because they had just 
had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, 
were clustered round the fire, by lamp-light. 

“Well! I am very glad to hear it,” said 
Scrooge's nephew, “because I haven't any great 
faith in these young housekeepers. What do 
you say, Topper?” 


[ 94 ] 


lA CH%I SrJvCtA S ^‘KPL 

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of 
Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, for he answered that a 
bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no 
right to express an opinion on the subject. 
Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister—the plump 
one with the lace tucker: not the one with the 
roses—blushed. 

“Do go on, Fred,” said Scrooge’s niece, 
clapping her hands. “He never finishes what 
he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!’ ’ 

Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, 
and, as it was impossible to keep the infection 
off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it 
with aromatic vinegar; his example was unani¬ 
mously followed. 

“I was only going to say,” said Scrooge’s 
nephew, “that the consequence of his taking a 
dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, 
as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, 
which could do him no harm. I am sure he 
loses pleasanter companions than he can find in 
his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office 
or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the 
same chance every year, whether he likes it or 
not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas 
till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of 

it_I defy him—if he finds me going there, in 

[95] 


tA CH^J STOMAS C^%9L 

good temper, year after year, and saying ‘Uncle 
Scrooge, how are you?’ If it only puts him in 
the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds that's 
something; and I think I shook him yesterday.” 

It was their turn to laugh, now, at the notion 
of his shaking Scrooge. But, being thoroughly 
good-natured, and not much caring what they 
laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he 
encouraged them in their merriment, and passed 
the bottle, joyously. 

After tea they had some music. For they 
were a musical family, and knew what they were 
about when they sung a Glee or Catch, I can 
assure you: especially Topper, who could growl 
away in the bass like a good one, and never swell 
the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the 
face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon 
the harp; and played, among other tunes, a 
simple little air (a mere nothing: you might 
learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had 
been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge 
from the boarding-school, as he had been re¬ 
minded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When 
this strain of music sounded, all the things that 
Ghost had shown him came upon his mind; he 
softened more and more; and thought that if he 
could have listened to it often, years ago, he 
[ 96 ] 


*A CH \I S TtMtAS C^XPL 

might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for 
his own happiness with his own hands, without 
resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob 
Marley. 

But they didn’t devote the whole evening to 
music. After awhile they played at forfeits; for 
it is good to be children sometimes, and never 
better than at Christmas, when its mighty 
Founder was a child himself. Stop! There was 
first a game at blind-man’s buff. Of course there 
was. And I no more believe Topper was really 
blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. 
My opinion is, that it was a done thing between 
him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost 
of Christmas Present knew it. The way he 
went after that plump sister in the lace tucker 
was an outrage on the credulity of human na¬ 
ture. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling 
over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, 
smothering himself amongst the curtains, wher¬ 
ever she went, there went he! He always knew 
where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch 
anybody else. If you had fallen up against him 
(as some of them did) on purpose, he would have 
made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which 
would have been an affront to your understand¬ 
ing, and would instantly have sidled off in the 
[ 97 ] 


tA CH'XJSTzM'A S C^%9L 

direction of the plump sister. She often cried 
out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. 
But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite 
of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutter- 
ings past him, he got her into a corner whence 
there was no escape; then his conduct was the 
most execrable. For his pretending not to know 
her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch 
her head-dress, and further to assure himself of 
her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her 
finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was 
vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him her 
opinion of it when, another blind man being in 
office, they were so very confidential together 
behind the curtains. 

Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blind- 
man’s-buff party, but was made comfortable 
with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug 
corner where the Ghost and Scrooge were close 
behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and 
loved her love to admiration with all the letters 
of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, 
When, and Where, she was very great, and, to 
the secret joy of Scrooge’s nephew, beat her 
sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, 
as Topper could have told you. There might 
have been twenty people there, young and old, 
[ 98 ] 


zA STzMtA S C^KP L 

but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, 
wholly forgetting, in the interest he had in what 
was going on, that his voice made no sound in 
their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess 
quite loud, and very often guessed right, too, for 
the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted 
not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than 
Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be. 

The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in 
this mood, and looked upon him with such 
favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowe d 
to stay until the guests departed. But this the 
Spirit said could not be done. 

“Here is a new game,” said Scrooge. “One 
half-hour, Spirit, only one!” 

It was a game called Yes and No, where 
Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, 
and the rest must find out what; he only answer¬ 
ing to their questions yes or no, as the case was. 
The brisk fire of questioning to which he was 
exposed elicited from him that he was thinking 
of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable 
animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled 
and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, 
and lived in London, and walked about the 
streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t 
led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, 
[ 99 ] 


*A CH%ISTtMtA S 

and was never killed in a market, and was not a 
horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, 
or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every 
fresh question that was put to him, this nephew 
burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so 
inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get 
up off the sofa, and stamp. At last the plump 
sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: 

“I have found it out! I know what it is, 
Fred! I know what it is?” 

“What is it?” cried Fred. 

“It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” 

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the 
universal sentiment, though some objected that 
the reply to “Is it a bear?” ought to have been 
“Yes”; inasmuch as an answer in the negative 
was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts 
from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had 
any tendency that way. 

“He has given us plenty of merriment, I am 
sure,” said Fred, “and it would be ungrateful 
not to drink his health. Here is a glass of 
mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; 
and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge!’ ” 

“Well! Uncle Scrooge!” they cried. 

“A merry Christmas and a happy New Year 
to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s 
[ 100 ] 


*A CH%I STtMtA S C^X9L 

nephew. “He wouldn't take it from me, but 
may he have it, nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!” 

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so 
gay and light of heart, that he would have 
pledged the unconscious company in return, 
and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the 
Ghost had given him time. But the whole 
scene passed off in the breath of the last word 
spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit 
were again upon their travels. 

Much they saw, and far they went, and 
many homes they visited, but always with a 
happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, 
and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and 
they were close at home; by struggling men, 
and they were patient in their greater hope; 
by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, 
hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, 
where vain man in his little brief authority had 
not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, 
he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his 
precepts. 

It was a long night, if it were only a night; 
but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the 
Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed 
into the space of time they passed together. It 
was strange, too, that, while Scrooge remained 
[ 101 ] 


CH'RJ STtMzAS C^XP L 

unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew 
older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this 
change, but never spoke of it until they left a 
children’s Twelfth-Night party, when, looking 
at the Spirit as they stood together in an open 
place, he noticed that its hair was grey. 

“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge. 

“My life upon this globe is very brief,” replied 
the Ghost. “It ends to-night.” 

“To-night!” cried Scrooge. 

“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is 
drawing near.” 

The chimes were ringing the three-quarters 
past eleven at that moment. 

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I 
ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s 
robe, “but I see something strange, and not 
belonging to yourself, protruding from your 
skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?” 

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is 
upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply “Look 
here.” 

From the foldings of its robe it brought two 
children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, 
miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and 
clung upon the outside of its garment. 

[ 102 ] 


Awm — 

1*- 


- ——— - ■ 

'■».,_- 






.'• ^a, t *P *j 

^vU«4>m. a^ y . '^ ...fcw. w 


■—^T - 


»e 




: .a .: "'rl*t$> ..„ t ‘ 

-. , . @ 


> 



SPIRIT OF TINY TIM, THY CHILDISH 
ESSENCE WAS FROM GOD! 

Page 127 

























































CHK! STtMtA S C^X9 L 

“Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down 
here!” exclaimed the Ghost. 

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, 
ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, 
in their humility. Where graceful youth should 
have filled their features out, and touched them 
with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled 
hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted 
them, and pulled them into shreds. Where 
angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, 
and glared out menacing. No change, no de¬ 
gradation, no perversion of humanity, in any 
grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful 
creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread. 

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them 
shown to him in this way, he tried to say they 
were fine children, but the words choked them¬ 
selves, rather than be parties to a he of such 
enormous magnitude. 

“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say 


no more. 

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking 
down upon them. “And they cling to me, 
appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignor¬ 
ance. This girlis Want. Beware of them both, 

and all of their degree, but most of all beware 
this boy, for on his brow I see that written which 
[103] 



*A CH%I ST^MzA S C^XPL 

is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny 
it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand 
towards the city. “Slander those who tell it 
ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and 
make it worse! And bide the end!” 

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried 
Scrooge. 

“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turn¬ 
ing on him for the last time with his own words. 
“Are there no workhouses?” 

The bell struck Twelve. 

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and 
saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, 
he remembered the prediction of old Jacob 
Marley, and, lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn 
Phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a 
mist along the ground towards him. 


[ 104 ] 



S TtAVe FO u 



THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS 

THE Phantom slowly, gravely, silently 
^ approached. When it came near him, 
Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in 
the very air through which this Spirit moved 
it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. 

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, 
which concealed its head, its face, its form, and 
left nothing of it visible, save one out-stretched 
hand. But for this, it would have been difficult 
to detach its figure from the night, and separate 
it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. 

He felt that it was tall and stately when it 
came beside him, and that its mysterious pres¬ 
ence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew 
no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved. 

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christ¬ 
mas Yet to Come?” said Scrooge. 

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward 
with its hand. 

“You are about to show me shadows of the 
things that have not happened, but will happen 
in the time before us,” Scrooge pursued. “Is 
that so, Spirit?” 


[ 105 ] 















*A CH%ISTtMtA S C^KP L 

The upper portion of the garment was con¬ 
tracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit 
had inclined its head. That was the only answer 
he received. 

Although well used to ghostly company by 
this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so 
much that his legs trembled beneath him, and 
he found that he could hardly stand when he 
prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a 
moment, as observing his condition, and giving 
him time to recover. 

But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It 
thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror to 
know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were 
ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, 
though he stretched his own to the utmost, could 
see nothing but a spectral hand and one great 
heap of black. 

“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I 
fear you more than any spectre I have seen. 
But, as I know your purpose is to do me good, 
and as I hope to live to be another man from 
what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, 
and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not 
speak to me?” 

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed 
straight before them. 

[ 106 ] 


<A CH ‘RJf S TS C^XPL 

“Lead on!” said Scrooge. “Lead on! The 
night is waning fast, and it is precious time to 
me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!” 

The phantom moved away as it had come 
towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow 
of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and 
carried him along. 

They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for 
the City rather seemed to spring up about them, 
and encompass them of its own act. But there 
they were in the heart of it; on Change, amongst 
the merchants; who hurried up and down, and 
chinked the money in their pockets, and con¬ 
versed in groups, and looked at their watches, 
and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold 
seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them 
often. 

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of 
business men. Observing that the hand was 
pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to 
their talk. 

“No,” said a great fat man with a monstrous 
chin, “I don’t know much about it either way. 
I only know he’s dead.” 

“When did he die?” inquired another. 

“Last night, I believe.” 

[107] 



C A CH%I STtMtA S C^'KPL 

“Why, what was the matter with him?” asked 
a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a 
very large snuff-box. “I thought he'd never 
die.” 

“God knows,” said the first with a yawn. 

“What has he done with his money?” asked 
a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excres¬ 
cence on the end of his nose that shook like the 
gills of a turkey-cock. 

“I haven't heard,” said the man with the 
large chin, yawning again. “Left it to his 
company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me . 
That's all I know.” 

This pleasantry was received with a general 
laugh. 

“It's likely to be a very cheap funeral,” said 
the same speaker; “for, upon my life, I don't 
know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make 
up a party, and volunteer?” 

“I don't mind going if a lunch is provided,” 
observed the gentleman with the excrescence on 
his nose. “But I must be fed if I make one.” 

Another laugh. 

“Well, I am the most disinterested among 
you, after all,” said the first speaker, “for I never 
wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But 
I’ll offer to go if anybody else will. When I 
[ 108 ] 


of CH'K! STtMtA S C^ c KP L 

come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I 
wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to 
stop and speak, whenever we met. Bye, bye!” 

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and 
mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the 
men, and looked towards the Spirit for an 
explanation. 

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its 
finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge 
listened again, thinking that the explanation 
might lie here. 

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They 
were men of business: very wealthy, and of 
great importance. He had made a point always 
of standing well in their esteem: in a business 
point of view, that is; strictly in a business 
point of view. 

“How are you?” said one. 

“How are you?” returned the other. 

“Well!” said the first. “Old Scratch has got 
his own at last, hey?” 

“So I am told,” returned the second. “Cold, 

isn’t it?” . 

“Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are 

not a skater, I suppose?” 

“No. No. Something else to think of. Good 

morning!” 


[ 109 ] 



*A C H( KJ STzMzA S 

Not another word. That was their meeting, 
their conversation and their parting. 

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised 
that the Spirit should attach importance to con¬ 
versations apparently so trivial; but, feeling 
assured that they must have some hidden pur¬ 
pose, he set himself to consider what it was 
likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed 
to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his 
old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost’s 
province was the Future. Nor could he think 
of any one immediately connected with himself, 
to whom he could apply them. But nothing 
doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they 
had some latent moral for his own improvement, 
he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, 
and everything he saw; and especially to observe 
the shadow of himself when it appeared. For 
he had an expectation that the conduct of his 
future self would give him the clue he missed, 
and would render the solution of these riddles 
easy. 

He looked about in that very place for his 
own image; but another man stood in his ac¬ 
customed corner, and, though the clock pointed 
to his usual time of day for being there, he saw 
no likeness of himself among the multitudes 
[HO] 


CH%I S C^ c KP L 

that poured in through the Porch. It gave 
him little surprise, however; for he had been 
revolving in his mind a change of life, and 
thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolu¬ 
tions carried out in this. 

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phan¬ 
tom, with its outstretched hand. When he 
roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he 
fancied, from the turn of the hand, and its 
situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen 
Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him 
shudder, and feel very cold. 

They left the busy scene, and went into an 
obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had 
never penetrated before, although he recognised 
its situation and its bad repute. The ways were 
foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched: 
the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. 
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, 
disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and 
life upon the straggling streets; and the whole 
quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery. 

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was 
a low-browed, beetling shop, below a penthouse 
roof, were iron, old rags, bottles, bones,. and 
greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within 
were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, 
[HI] 


*A CH^IS TzMtA S C^X9L 

hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of 
all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scruti¬ 
nise were bred and hidden in mountains of un¬ 
seemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and 
sepulchres of bones. Sitting in amongst the wares 
he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old 
bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy 
years of age; who had screened himself from the 
cold air without by a frouzy curtaining of mis¬ 
cellaneous tatters hung upon a line; and smoked 
his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement. 

Scrooge and the Phantom came into the 
presence of this man, just as a woman with a 
heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had 
scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly 
laden, came in too; and she was closely followed 
by a man in faded black, who was no less startled 
by the sight of them than they had been upon 
the recognition of each other. After a short 
period of blank astonishment, in which the old 
man with the pipe had joined them, they all 
three burst into a laugh. 

“Let the charwoman alone to be the first!” 
cried she who had entered first. “Let the laun¬ 
dress alone to be the second; and let the under¬ 
taker's man alone to be the third. Look here, 
[ 112 ] 


*A CH%I STzMtA S C^XPL 

old Joe, here’s a chance! If we haven’t all three 
met here without meaning it!” 

“You couldn’t have met in a better place,” 
said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. 
“Come into the parlour. You were made free 
of it long ago, you know; and the other two 
an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the 
shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an’t such a 
rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, 
I believe; and I’m sure there’s no such old bones 
here as mine. Ha! ha! We’re all suitable to 
our calling, we’re well matched. Come into the 
parlour. Come into the parlour.” 

The parlour was the space behind the screen 
of rags. The old man raked the fire together 
with an old stair-rod, and, having trimmed his 
smoky lamp (for it was night) with the stem 
of his pipe, put it into his mouth again. 

While he did this, the woman who had already 
spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat 
down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing 
her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold 
defiance at the other two. 

“What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” 
said the woman. “Every person has a right to 
take care of themselves. He always did! 

[113] 


CH<RJ STzMtA S C^%S> L 

“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. 
“No man more so.” 

“Why, then, don’t stand staring as if you was 
afraid, woman! Who’s the wiser? We’re not 
going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I 
suppose?” 

“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man 
together. “We should hope not.” 

“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s 
enough. Who’s the worse for the loss of a few 
things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?” 

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. 

“If he wanted to keep ’em after he was dead, 
a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why 
wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had 
been, he’d have had somebody to look after him 
when he was struck with Death, instead of 
lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.” 

“I wish it was a little heavier judgment,” 
replied the woman; “and it should have been, 
you may depend upon it, if I could have laid 
my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, 
old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak 
out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor 
afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well 
that we were helping ourselves before we met 
[ 114 ] 


*A C H'XJ STtMiAS C^'KPL 
here, I believe. It’s no sin. Open the bundle, 
Joe.” 

But the gallantry of her friends would not 
allow of this; and the man in faded black, mount¬ 
ing the breach first, produced his plunder. It 
was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, 
a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great 
value, were all. They were severally examined 
and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums 
he was disposed to give for each upon the wall, 
and added them up into a total when he found 
that there was nothing more to come. 

“That’s your account,” said Joe, “and I 
wouldn’t give another sixpence, if I was to be 
boiled for not doing it. Who’s next?” 

Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a 
little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver 
tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few 
boots. Her account was stated on the wall in 
the same manner. 

“I always give too much to ladies. It’s a 
weakness of mine, and that’s the way I ruin my¬ 
self,” said old Joe. “That’s your account. If 
you asked me for another penny, and made it an 
open question, I’d repent of being so liberal, 
and knock off half-a-crown.” 

[ 115 ] 


*A CH%I STzMiA S C^X9 L 

“And now undo my bundle, Joe,” said the 
first woman. 

Joe went down on his knees for the greater 
convenience of opening it, and, having unfast¬ 
ened a great many knots, dragged out a large 
heavy roll of some dark stuff. 

“What do you call this?” said Joe. “Bed- 
curtains?” 

“Ah!” returned the woman, laughing and 
leaning forward on her crossed arms. “Bed- 
curtains!” 

“You don’t mean to say you took ’em down, 
rings and all, with him lying there?” said Joe. 

“Yes, I do,” replied the woman. “Why not?” 

“You were born to make your fortune,” said 
Joe, “and you’ll certainly do it.” 

“I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can 
get anything in it by reaching it out, for the 
sake of such a man as He was, I promise you, 
Joe,” returned the woman coolly. “Don’t drop 
that oil upon the blankets, now.” 

“His blankets?” asked Joe. 

“Whose else’s do you think?” replied the 
woman. “He isn’t likely to take cold without 
’em, I dare say.” 


[ 116 ] 


*A CH%I STtMtA S C^XPL 

“I hope he didn’t die of anything catching? 
Eh?” said old Joe, stopping in his work, and 
looking up. 

“Don’t you be afraid of that,” returned the 
woman. “I an’t so fond of his company that 
I’d loiter about him for such things, if he did. 
Ah! You may look through that shirt till your 
eyes ache: but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a 
threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a 
fine one too. They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t 
been for me.” 

“What do you call wasting of it?” said old Joe. 

“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” 
replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody 
was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. 
If calico an’t good enough for such a purpose, it 
isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as 
becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier 
than he did in that one.” 

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. 
As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the 
scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he 
viewed them with a detestation and disgust 
which could hardly have been greater, though 
they had been obscene demons, marketing the 
corpse itself. 


[ 117 ] 


CH^STtMzA S C^KPL 

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman when 
old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money 
in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. 
“This is the end of it, you see! He frightened 
every one away from him when he was alive, to 
profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!” 

“Spirit!” said Scrooge, shuddering from head 
to foot. “I see, I see. The case of this un¬ 
happy man might be my own. My life tends 
that way now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?” 

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had 
changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a 
bare, uncurtained bed: on which beneath a 
ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, 
which, though it was dumb, announced itself 
in awful language. 

The foom was very dark, too dark to be ob¬ 
served with any accuracy, though Scrooge 
glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, 
anxious to know what kind of room it was. A 
pale light rising in the outer air, fell straight 
upon the bed: and on it, plundered and bereft, 
unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body 
of this man. 

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its 
steady hand was pointed to the head. The 
cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest 
[ 118 ] 


^ £H ‘RJ S T<JXC*AS C^%9 L 

raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s 
part, would have disclosed the face. He thought 
of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed 
to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the 
veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side. 

Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up 
thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors 
as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy 
dominion But of the loved, revered, and 
honoured head thou canst not turn one hair to 
thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. 
It is not that the hand is heavy, and will fall 
down when released; it is not that the heart 
and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, 
generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and 
tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, 
strike! And see his good deeds springing from 
the wound, to sow the world with life immortal! 

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s 
ears, and yet he heard them when he looked 
upon the bed. He thought, if this man could 
be raised up now, what would be his foremost 
thoughts ? Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares ? 
They have brought him to a rich end, truly! 

He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not 
a man, a woman, or a child to say he was kind 
to me in this or that, and for the memory of 
[ 119 ] 


*A CH'KJ ST^MzA S C^XPL 

one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat 
was tearing at the door, and there was a sound 
or gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. 
What they wanted in the room of death, and 
why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge 
did not dare to think. 

“Spirit!” he said, “this is a fearful place. In 
leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. 
Let us go!” 

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved 
finger to the head. 

“I understand you,” Scrooge returned, “and 
I would do it if I could. But I have not the 
power. Spirit. I have not the power.” 

Again it seemed to look upon him. 

“If there is any person in the town who feels 
emotion caused by this man’s death,” said 
Scrooge, quite agonised, “show that person to 
me, Spirit, I beseech you!” 

The Phantom spread its dark robe before 
him, for a moment, like a wing; and, with¬ 
drawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where 
a mother and her children were. 

She was expecting some one, and with anxious 
eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; 
started at every sound; looked out from the 
window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, 
[ 120 ] 


^ CH ‘RJ S TiMzA S C^XPL 

to work with her needle; and could hardly bear 
the voices of her children in their play. 

At length the long-expected knock was heard. 
She hurried to the door, and met her husband; 
a man whose face was careworn and depressed, 
though he was young. There was a remark¬ 
able expression in it now; a kind of serious delight 
of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled 
to repress. 

He sat down to the dinner that had been 
hoarding for him by the fire, and, when she 
asked him faintly what news (which was not 
until after a long silence), he appeared embar¬ 
rassed how to answer. 

“Is it good,” she said, “or bad?” to help him. 

“Bad,” he answered. 

“We are quite ruined?” 

“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.” 

“If he relents,” she said, amazed, “there is! 
Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has 
happened.” 

“He is past relenting,” said her husband. 
“He is dead.” 

She was a mild and patient creature, if her 
face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her 
soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped 
hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, 
[ 121 ] 


ol CH%I STtMtA S 

and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of 
her heart. 

“What the half-drunken woman, whom I told 
you of last night, said to me when I tried to see 
him and obtain a week's delay; and what I 
thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns 
out to have been quite true. He was not only 
very ill, but dying, then.” 

“To whom will our debt be transferred?” 

“I don't know. But, before that time, we 
shall be ready with the money; and, even though 
we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to 
find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We 
may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!” 

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts 
were lighter. The children's faces, hushed and 
clustered round to hear what they so little under¬ 
stood, were brighter; and it was a happier house 
for this man's death The only emotion that 
the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, 
was one of pleasure. 

“Let me see some tenderness connected with 
a death,” said Scrooge; “or that dark chamber, 
Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever 
present to me.” 

The Ghost conducted him through several 
streets familiar to his feet; and, as they went 
[ 122 ] 



<A CH'XJSTtMtA S 

along, Scrooge looked here and there to find 
himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They 
entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling 
he had visited before; and found the mother and 
the children seated round the fire. 

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits 
were as still as statues in one corner, and sat 
looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. 
The mother and her daughters were engaged in 
sewing. But surely they were very quiet. 

“ ‘And he took a child, and set him in the 
midst of them/ ” 

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He 
had not dreamed them. The boy must have 
read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the 
threshold. Why did he not go on? 

The mother laid her work upon the table, 
and put her hand up to her face. 

“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said. 

The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim! 

“They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s 
wife. “It makes them weak by candle-light; 
and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father, 
when he comes home, for the world. It must 
be near his time.” 

“Past it rather,” Peter answered, shutting up 
his book. “But I think he has walked a little 
[ 123 ] 


tA CH%I STtMtA S C^KPL 

slower than he used, these few last evenings, 
mother.” 

They were very quiet again. At last she said, 
and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered 
once: 

“I have known him walk with—I have known 
him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder very 
fast indeed.” 

“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.” 

“And so have I,” exclaimed another. So 
had all. 

“But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, 
intent upon her work, “and his father loved him 
so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And 
there is your father at the door!” 

She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob 
in his comforter—he had need of it, poor fellow— 
came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, 
and they all tried who should help him to it most. 
Then the two young Cratchits got upon his 
knees, and laid, each child, a little cheek against 
his face, as if they said, “Don't mind it, father. 
Don't be grieved!” 

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke 
pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the 
work upon the table, and praised the industry 
[ 124 ] 


*A CH'BJSTtMAS C^KP L 

and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They 
would be done long before Sunday, he said. 

“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” 
said his wife. 

“Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you 
could have gone. It would have done you good 
to see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it 
often. I promised him that I would walk there 
on a Sunday. My little, little child!” cried Bob. 
“My little child!” 

He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help 
it. If he could have helped it, he and his child 
would have been farther apart, perhaps, than 
they were. 

He left the room, and went upstairs into the 
room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and 
hung with Christmas. There was a chair set 
close beside the child, and there were signs of 
some one having been there lately. Poor Bob 
sat down in it, and when he had thought a little 
and composed himself, he kissed the little face. 
He was reconciled to what had happened, and 
went down again quite happy. 

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls 
and mother working still. Bob told them of the 
extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, 
whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, 
[ 125 ] 


*A CH'RJSTzM'A S C^X9L 

meeting him in the street that day, and seeing 
that he looked a little—“just a little down, you 
know,” said Bob, inquired what had happened 
to distress him. “On which,” said Bob, “for 
he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever 
heard, I told him. ‘I am heartily sorry for it, 
Mr. Cratchit/ he said, ‘and heartily sorry for 
your good wife/ By-the-bye, how he ever 
knew that I don’t know.” 

“Knew what, my dear?” 

“Why, that you were a good wife,” replied 
Bob. 

“Everybody knows that,” said Peter. 

“Very well observed, my boy!” cried Bob. 
“I hope they do. ‘Heartily sorry/ he said, 
‘for your good wife. If I can be of service to 
you in any way/ he said, giving me his card, 
‘that’s where I live. Pray come to me/ Now, 
it wasn’t,” cried Bob, “for the sake of anything 
he might be able to do for us, so much as for 
his kind way, that this was quite delightful. 
It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny 
Tim, and felt with us.” 

“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. 
Cratchit. 

“You would be sure of it, my dear,” returned 
Bob, “if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t 
[ 126 ] 


*A CH'HJ STtMtA S C^%S>L 

be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he 
got Peter a better situation.” 

“Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit. 

“And then,” cried one of the girls, “Peter 
will be keeping company with some one, and 
setting up for himself.” 

“Get along with you!” retorted Peter, grinning. 

“It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one 
of these days; though there’s plenty of time 
for that, my dear. But however and whenever 
we part from one another, I am sure we shall 
none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall we—or 
this first parting that there was amongst us?” 

“Never, father!” cried they all. 

“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, 
that when we recollect how patient and how 
mild he was; although he was a little, little child; 
we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and 
forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.” 

“No, never, father!” they all cried again. 

“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am 
very happy!” 

Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed 
him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and 
Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny 
Tim, thy childish essence was from God! 

[ 127 ] 


zA Cht^isTzMzA s c^X9 l 

“Spectre,” said Scrooge, “something informs 
me that our parting moment is at hand. I 
know it, but I know not how. Tell me what 
man that was whom we saw lying dead?” 

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come con¬ 
veyed him, as before—though at a different 
time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no 
order in these latter visions, save that they were 
in the Future—into the resorts of business men, 
but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit 
did not stay for anything, but went straight on, 
as to the end just now desired, until besought by 
Scrooge to tarry for a moment. 

“This court,” said Scrooge, “through which 
we hurry now, is where my place of occupation 
is, and has been for a length of time. I see the 
house. Let me behold what I shall be in days 
to come.” 

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed 
elsewhere. 

“The house is yonder,” Scrooge exclaimed. 
“Why do you point away?” 

The inexorable finger underwent no change. 

Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, 
and looked in. It was an office still, but not 
his. The furniture was not the same, and the 
[ 128 ] 


<A CH%I STtMiAS C^XP L 

figure in the chair was not himself. The Phan¬ 
tom pointed as before. 

He joined it once again, and, wondering why 
and whither he had gone, accompanied it until 
they reached an iron gate. He paused to look 
round before entering. 

A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, 
whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath 
the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in 
by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the 
growth of vegetation’s death, not life; choked up 
with too much burying; fat with repleted 
appetite. A worthy place! 

The Spirit stood among the graves, and 
pointed down to One. He advanced towards it 
trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had 
been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning 
in its solemn shape. 

“Before I draw nearer to that stone to which 
you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one 
question. Are these the shadows of the things 
that Will be, or are they shadows of the things 
that May be only?” 

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the 
grave by which it stood. 

“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, 
to which, if persevered in, they must lead, 
[ 129 ] 


CH^STzM^S C^XPL 

said Scrooge. “But, if the courses be departed 
from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with 
what you show me!” 

The Spirit was immovable as ever. 

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he 
went; and, following the finger, read upon 
the stone of the neglected grave his own name, 
Ebenezer Scrooge. 

“Am / that man who lay upon the bed?” he 
cried upon his knees. 

The finger pointed from the grave to him, 
and back again. 

“No, Spirit! Oh, no, no!” 

The finger still was there. 

“Spirit!” he cried, tight clutching at its robe, 
“hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not 
be the man I must have been but for this inter¬ 
course. Why show me this, if I am past all 
hope?” 

For the first time the hand appeared to shake. 

“Good Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the 
ground he fell before it: “your nature intercedes 
for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may 
change these shadows you have shown me by an 
altered life?” 

The kind hand trembled. 

[ 130 ] 



SCROOGE CREPT TOWARDS IT, 
READ UPON THE STONE HIS 
NAME, ‘EBENEZER SCROOGE’ 

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*A CH%I STtMtA S C^%OL 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and 
try to keep it all the year. I will live in the 
Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits 
of all Three shall strive within me. I will not 
shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell 
me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!” 

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. 
It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his 
entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger 
yet, repulsed him. 

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have 
his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the 
Phantom’s hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed 
and dwindled down into a bedpost. 


[ 131 ] 






sr^ve Five 


THE END OF IT 

T^ES and the bedpost was his own. The 
JL bed was his own, the room was his own. 
Best and happiest of all, the Time before him 
was his own, to make amends in! 

“I will live in the Past, the Present, and the 
Future!” Scrooge repeated as he scrambled 
out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall 
strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven 
and the Christmas Time be praised for this! 
I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees! 

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his 
good intentions, that his broken voice would 
scarcely answer to his call. He had been sob¬ 
bing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, 
and his face was wet with tears. 

“They are not torn down,” cried Scrooge, 
folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms, 
“they are not torn down, rings and all. They 
are here—I am here—the shadows of the things 
that would have been may be dispelled. They 
will be. I know they will!” 

His hands were busy with his garments all 
this time; turning them inside out, putting 
[ 133 ] 







*A C H ‘RJ S T<iMzA S C^%S>L 

them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying 
them, making them parties to every kind of 
extravagance. 

“I don’t know what to do!” cried Scrooge, 
laughing and crying in the same breath; and 
making a perfect Laocoon of himself with his 
stockings. “I am as light as a feather, I am as 
happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school¬ 
boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A 
merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New 
Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! 
Hallo!” 

He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was 
now standing there: perfectly winded. 

“There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in!” 
cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going 
round the fire-place. “There’s the door by 
which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! 
There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christ¬ 
mas Present sat! There’s the window where 
I saw the wandering Spirits! It’s all right, it’s 
all true, it all happened. Ha, ha, ha!” 

Really, for a man who had been out of practice 
for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a 
most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, 
long line of brilliant laughs! 

[ 134 ] 



*A CH%I STtMzA S 

“I don’t know what day of the month it is,” 
said Scrooge. “I don’t know how long I have 
been among the Spirits. I don’t know any¬ 
thing. I’m quite a baby. Never mind. I 
don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo! 
Whoop! Hallo here!” 

He was checked in his transports by the 
churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had 
ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong, 
bell! Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! 
Oh, glorious, glorious! 

Running to the window, he opened it, and put 
out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, 
jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood 
to dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky; 
sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! 
Glorious! 

“What’s to-day?” cried Scrooge, calling down¬ 
ward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps 
had loitered in to look about him. 

“Eh?” returned the boy with all his might 
of wonder. 

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. 

“Today!” replied the boy. "Why, Christ¬ 
mas Day.” 

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to him¬ 
self. "I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have 
[ 135 ] 


CH^ STtMtA S C^XP L 

done it all in one night. They can do anything 
they like. Of course they can. Of course they 
can. Hallo, my fine fellow!” 

“Hallo!” returned the boy. 

“Do you know the Poulterer’s in the next 
street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired. 

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad. 

“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A re¬ 
markable boy! Do you know whether they’ve 
sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up 
there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big 
one?” 

“What! the one as big as me?” returned the 
boy. 

“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s 
a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!” 

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy. 

“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.” 

“Walk-ER!” exclaimed the boy. 

“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. 
Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, 
that I may give them the directions where to 
take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give 
you a shilling. Come back with him in less than 
five minutes, and I’ll give you half-a-crown!” 

The boy was off like a shot. He must have 
[ 136 ] 


CH'XJSTtMtA S 

had a steady hand at a trigger who could have 
got a shot off half so fast. 

‘Til send it to Bob Cratchit’s,” whispered 
Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a 
laugh. “He shan’t know who sends it. It’s 
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never 
made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!” 

The hand in which he wrote the address was 
not a steady one; but write it he did, somehow, 
and went downstairs to open the street-door, 
ready for the coming of the poulterer’s man. 
As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the 
knocker caught his eye. 

“I shall love it as long as I live?” cried Scrooge, 
patting it with his hand. “I scarcely ever 
looked at it before. What an honest expression 
it has in its face! It’s a wonderful knocker!— 
Here’s the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are 
you? Merry Christmas!” 

It was a Turkey! He never could have stood 
upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 
’em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing- 
wax. 

“Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden 
Town,” said Scrooge. “You must have a cab.” 

The chuckle with which he said this, and the 
chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and 
[ 137 ] 


*A CH c KJ STzMA S C^%S>L 

the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and 
the chuckle with which he recompensed the 
boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle 
with which he sat down breathless in his chair 
again, and chuckled till he cried. 

Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand 
continued to shake very much; and shaving re¬ 
quires attention, even when you don't dance 
while you are at it. But, if he had cut the end 
of his nose off, he would have put a piece of 
sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied. 

He dressed himself “all in his best," and at 
last got out into the streets. The people were 
by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them 
with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, 
walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge re¬ 
garded everyone with a delightful smile. He 
looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that 
three or four good-humoured fellows said, “Good 
morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" 
And Scrooge said often afterwards that, of all 
the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were 
the blithest in his ears. 

He had not gone far when, coming on towards 
him, he beheld the portly gentleman who had 
walked into his counting-house the day before, 
and said “Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe?" 

[ 138 ] 



WALKING WITH HIS HANDS BEHIND 
HIM, SCROOGE REGARDED EVERY 
ONE WITH A DELIGHTED SMILE 

Page 138 


eTHeu-f- 

eveftetr 












































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CH^JS TzMzA S C^XPL 

It sent a pang across his heart to think how this 
old gentleman would look upon him when they 
met; but he knew what path lay straight before 
him, and he took it. 

“My dear sir,” said Scrooge, quickening his 
pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his 
hands, “how do you do? I hope you succeeded 
yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry 
Christmas to you, sir!” 

“Mr. Scrooge!” 

“Yes,” said Scrooge. “That is my name, and 
I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me 
to ask your pardon. And will you have the good¬ 
ness-” Here Scrooge whispered in his ear. 

“Lord bless me!” cried the gentleman, as if 
his breath were taken away. “My dear Mr. 
Scrooge, are you serious?” 

“If you please,” said Scrooge. “Not a farth¬ 
ing less. A great many back payments are 
included in it, I assure you. Will you do me 
that favour?” 

“My dear sir,” said the other, shaking hands 
with him, “I don’t know what to say to such 
munifi-” 

“Don’t say anything, please,” retorted Scrooge. 
“Come and see me. Will you come and see me ?” 

[ 139 ] 


*A CH'HJ STzMzA S 

“I will!” cried the old gentleman. And it was 
clear he meant to do it. 

“Thankee/’ said Scrooge. “I am much 
obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless 
you!” 

He went to church, and walked about the 
streets, and watched the people hurrying to and 
fro, and patted the children on the head, and 
questioned beggars, and looked down into the 
kitchens of houses, and up to the windows: and 
found that everything could yield him pleasure. 
He had never dreamed that any walk—that any¬ 
thing—could give him so much happiness. In 
the afternoon he turned his steps towards his 
nephew’s house. 

He passed the door a dozen times before he 
had the courage to go up and knock. But he 
made a dash, and did it. 

“Is your master at home, my dear?” said 
Scrooge to the girl. “Nice girl! Very.” 

“Yes sir.” 

“Where is he, my love?” said Scrooge. 

“He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with 
mistress. I’ll show you upstairs, if you please.” 

“Thankee. He knows me,” said Scrooge, 
with his hand already on the dining-room lock. 
“I’ll go in here, my dear.” 

[ 140 ] 


CH%IST<MtA S 

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in 
round the door. They were looking at the 
table (which was spread out in great array); 
for these young housekeepers are always nervous 
on such points, and like to see that everything 
is right. 

“Fred!” said Scrooge. 

Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage 
started! Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, 
about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, 
or he wouldn't have done it on any account. 

“Why, bless my soul!” cried Fred, “who’s 
that?” 

“It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come 
to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?” 

Let him in! It is a mercy he didn’t shake 
his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. 
Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked 
just the same. So did Topper when he came. 
So did the plump sister when she came. So 
did every one when they came. Wonderful 
party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, 
won-der-ful happiness! 

But he was early at the office next morning. 
Oh, he was early there! If he could only be 
there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming 
[ 141 ] 


CH%I STtMtA S C^KPL 

late! That was the thing he had set his heart 
upon. 

And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck 
nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. 
He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind 
his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, 
that he might see him come into the tank. 

His hat was off before he opened the door; 
his comforter too. He was on his stool in a 
jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were 
trying to overtake nine o'clock. 

“Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed 
voice as near as he could feign it. “What do 
you mean by coming here at this time of day?" 

“I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. “I am 
behind my time." 

“You are!" repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think 
you are. Step this way, sir, if you please." 

“It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, 
appearing from the tank. “It shall not be 
repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, 
sir." 

“Now, Til tell you what, my friend," said 
Scrooge. “I am not going to stand this sort of 
thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, 
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a 
dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into 
[ 142 ] 




SCROOGE WAS BETTER THAN HIS WORD . . . 
TO TINY TIM, WHO DID NOT DIE, HE WAS 
A SECOND FATHER 

Page 143 



















































* 


















(* 













' I 
















/ 











































t/tf" cH XI ST<JXC<As C^XOL 

the tank again: and therefore I am about to 
raise your salary!” 

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the 
ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking 
Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling 
to the people in the court for help and a strait- 
waistcoat. 

“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge with 
an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as 
he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christ¬ 
mas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you 
for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and 
endeavour to assist your struggling family, and 
we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, 
over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop. Bob! 
Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle 
before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!” 

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it 
all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who 
did not die, he was a second father. He became 
as good a friend, as good a master, and as good 
a man as the good old City knew, or any other 
good old city, town or borough in the good old 
world. Some people laughed to see the altera¬ 
tion in him, but he let them laugh, and little 
heeded them; for he was wise enough to know 
[ 143 ] 


C A CH%I STtMzA S C^XpL 

that nothing ever happened on this globe, for 
good, at which some people did not have their 
fill of laughter in the outset; and, knowing that 
such as these would be blind anyway, he thought 
it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their 
eyes in grins as have the malady in less attrac¬ 
tive forms. His own heart laughed: and that 
was quite enough for him. 

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, 
but lived upon the Total-Abstinence Principle 
ever afterwards; and it was always said of him 
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if 
any man alive possessed the knowledge. May 
that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, 
as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One. 


1144 ) 

















































